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REVELATION EP7 THE MILLNNIUM THE FIG TREE AND OLIVE TREE AND VINE NOTES

The Divine Strategist

When we study the past and possible future of our planet, the sheer volume of global disruption often makes biblical prophecy feel like a chaotic sequence of stops and starts, failed drafts and last-minute divine corrections. But if we step back and view history through the word of God as the Divine Strategist, an amazing scriptural picture begins to emerge. At the centre of this divine/human earthly drama is the single glowing seed of Jesus, highlighted as the promised olive tree seed of faith made to one man called Abraham four thousand years ago - a master stroke, that through one lineage every family on earth would receive an eternal inheritance. And Jesus is also called the vine, and his followers are the branches

So history is not drifting. It is an organised, predestined, calculated movement toward a specific and perfect goal. And by understanding God’s Divine Countdown, we are taken out of confusion into a dazzling and daring clarity. To recognise what God is doing, and where we are standing in this countdown, we need to understand the roles of Abraham, Israel and the Gentile nations under their codenames as God's plant life.

Abraham’s plant codename is the root of the olive tree. Israel is both an olive tree and a fig tree. And then you have the Gentiles, the wild olive branches that are grafted into that olive tree.

Now before we go any further, let's separate two of those trees, because they are not doing the same thing. Both the olive and the fig relate to Israel, but they operate in different spheres of God's administration. One is spiritual and covenantal - that's the olive tree. The other is national and geographical - that's the fig tree spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24 and the national fig tree provides the historical stage upon which the wider spiritual strategy of the olive tree unfolds. When Jesus first came to his people the nation of Israel was also the olive tree of spiritual Israel, and he was rejected by both.

Let’s keep that fact in mind as we go because both the fig tree and the olive tree went through catastrophic change both spiritually and geographically. So we must first understand the nature of the olive tree we are compelled to read what Paul wrote in Romans - Romans 1I:1 ask, then, has God rejected his own people, the nation of Israel? Of course not! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham and a member of the tribe of Benjamin. No, God has not rejected his own people, whom he chose from the very beginning. Do you realise what the Scriptures say about this? Elijah the prophet complained to God about the people of Israel and said, "LORD, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too." And do you remember God's reply? He said, "No, I have 7,000 others who have never bowed down to Baal!"

It is the same today, for a few of the people of Israel have remained faithful (to Jesus) because of God's grace… And since it is through God's kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God's grace would not be what it really is - free and undeserved.

Did God's people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! They were disobedient, so God made salvation available to the Gentiles - the rest of the world. But he chose to have his own people become jealous and claim (his covenant favour) their own way for themselves. Now if the Gentiles were enriched because the people of Israel rejected God's offer of salvation through Jesus, think how much greater a blessing the world will share when they finally accept it.

The Olive Tree

So I want to ask some questions here.

What does the olive tree speak of? Spiritual covenant Israel.

What is the root? Abraham - one man.

What is the seed? Jesus.

And who are his fruit? All who live a new covenant life with Jesus by grace and faith.

So that's the olive tree picture: Jesus the seed, Abraham the root, some branches get broken off and others get grafted in. I’ll read those verses from Romans 11 shortly.

But first look at The Fig Tree: the 1948 Prophetic Countdown

Remember the fig tree speaks of National Israel now, not spiritual Israel, not the olive tree. Now in Matthew 24, as we discussed in the preceding episode 6 last week, Jesus gave us a specific marker for the end-of-the-age - when the fig tree begins to "put forth its leaves," the end is imminent.

For two thousand years this tree was dormant -. But in 1948 things changed in the global landscape. When the Israeli flag was raised and the nation was physically restored to its land, the fig tree officially blossomed. So that historical event speaks of a ticking countdown clock. Jesus explicitly stated that the generation alive to witness this blossoming would not pass away before the fulfilment of all things. We are not just living in "interesting times." We are living in the final movement of a strategic timeline that began with that blossoming in 1948.

The Divine Strategy: How Stumbling Led to Reconciliation

So let's see how the stumbling of the original olive tree branches led to reconciliation. Israel's temporary fall was not a failure of God's plan. It became part of a larger strategy of judgement and mercy, and the hardening of their hearts was sovereignly repurposed to facilitate a wider reconciliation, not just for Israel but for the entire kosmos.

The original olive branches lost faith in Jesus as God, and the fig tree lost its identity as a nation and was dispersed, and the wild olive branches of us as humanity were grafted in through Jesus into a new covenant that Israel had rejected.

A note on replacement theology

Now I want to make a note on what's called replacement theology. Gentiles do not replace Israel. There is only one olive tree, with branches temporarily taken off and other branches grafted in, and we Gentile believers are wild branches sustained by the original Abrahamic root of faith. Paul says it very plainly, and he says it as a warning:

Romans 11:16 If the roots of this olive tree are holy, the branches will be, too. But some of these branches from Abraham's olive tree (elaia) - some people of Israel - have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree (agrielaios - earthy/Adamic), have been grafted in. So now you also receive the Abrahamic covenant blessing God promised Abraham and his children, to share in the rich nourishment from the root of God's special olive tree. But you must not brag that you were grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. You are just branches, not the root.

Those branches were broken off because they didn't believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe. So don't think highly of yourself, but fear what could happen. For if God did not spare the original branches, he won't spare you either. Notice how God is both kind and severe. He is severe toward those who disobeyed, but kind to you if you continue to trust in his kindness. But if you stop trusting, you also will be cut off.

And if the people of Israel turn from their unbelief, they will be grafted in again, for God has the power to graft them back into the tree. You, by nature, were a branch cut from a wild olive tree. So if God was willing to do something contrary to nature by grafting you into his cultivated tree, he will be far more eager to graft the original branches back into the tree where they belong.

So remember, the root is Abraham and we are the branches. And this grafting is tied to a physical timeline.

The Unripe Figs of current national Israel

Now that fig tree nation has had good times and bad times. And the good times are not good anymore, and the bad times are getting worse. And many of them may think they are a covenant olive tree - but they're not – not yet. And the book of Revelation makes this clear, because it speaks of the figs on the current fig tree in Israel, in Jerusalem, right now as unripe, immature figs at this present time since 1948.

Revelation 6:12-17; 7:1-8 I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its untimely figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.

Right now, let's look at that picture. The falling stars speak of believers losing their position with Christ through immaturity, lack of faith and compromise with the world, and the mighty wind shakes everything that can be shaken. That's the sixth seal.

And we also have untimely figs, which speaks of the current National Israel - the figs are there, but they have not ripened. So the fig tree is not yet ready to occupy its promised land because it has maintained its rejection of the promised new covenant – and the olive branches are still broken off.

And that promise was not vague. Let's hear what it was they turned down:

Jeremiah 31:33 I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you;

A new heart, and the law written on the inside of the mind. That is the new covenant fulfilled through Christ and foretold in the Abrahamic covenant of faith.

So the immature believers and the unripe figs both face that fierce wind, which speaks of spiritual forces of darkness drawing them into the world's corrupt. And Hebrews tells us what the shaking is for:

Hebrews 12:27 ...the removal of those things that are being shaken, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

The Catalyst for Restoration: The Two Witnesses

Now all of this loops around at the end, because Scripture says God will save all Israel. How? Who is going to come and preach to Israel? Well, two men called the two witnesses. They are actually called the two olive trees, which is very interesting, and their ministry brings National Israel back into the olive tree, the new covenant in Christ.

Revelation 11:4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth.

It's a legal necessity. These figures are prophetically linked to Moses, who represents the Law, and Elijah, who represents the Prophets. And they met with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. I wonder what they said to him at that time.

Israel's national, legal and spiritual identity is bound to the Law and the Prophets, and en masse the nation will only respond to a testimony that validates those foundational scriptures through these two witnesses. There is already a remnant that has accepted Jesus, and there are many people bringing Jewish people to the Lord, and that's fine. But these two have to come back and give their gospel testimony. I'll say more about them in later sessions.

And through that testimony the fig tree is brought into olive tree ripeness. Israel hears, believes, and is provoked to reconciliation with their Messiah. Paul calls this a mystery and states it plainly:

Romans 11 I want you to understand this mystery, dear brothers and sisters, so that you will not feel proud about yourselves. God chose to allow the heart of Israel to be partly hardened and blinded, but this will last only until the full number of all the nations comes to Christ at the end. And then all Israel will be saved. As the Scriptures say, "The one who rescues will come from Zion, and he will turn Israel away from ungodliness. And this is my covenant with them, that I will take away their sins."

Many of the people of Israel are now enemies of the Good News, and this benefits you Gentiles. Yet they are still the people he loves because he chose their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For God's gifts and his call can never be withdrawn.

So that's where the loop closes. The original branches are grafted back in, and the fig tree nation gets to share, finally, not just Canaan but the entire world with all believers in Jesus. Paul says that this brings life from the dead.

And this final reconciliation sets the stage for the literal, physical return of Christ and the inauguration of a new era of governance - a thousand-year Millennium governance.

So that leaves us with one question, and the rest of this message is about answering it.

The Millennial Bridge: a thousand-year governance

Revelation 20:4 They lived and reigned with him for a thousand years.

Upon his return, Christ inaugurates a visible, physical reign on the earth for a literal thousand years. God's people live and reign with him, and this becomes the public vindication of God's word on the very earth that humanity fractured.

The question is When? Because God has not left that vague either. And to get at it, we have to go all the way back - back past Abraham, and past the flood, to the seven days of creation

So back to the days of creation because we have to go back to creation, particularly the sixth day of man and woman and the seventh day of sabbath rest. Because God foretold the millennium when he rested on the seventh day. Why did he rest – he wasn’t fatigued – he wanted to enjoy his loving relationship with his beautiful and spectacular creation especially his human family.

Genesis 1:27 So God created human beings in his own image; male and female he created them. Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! ... And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.

Genesis 2:1 So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy - set apart.

There is an amazing parallel between the events of God's creative week and the six thousand years of God’s plan of redemption since Adam fell - which brings us finally to the one thousand-year reign of Christ on earth with his people

2 Peter 3:8 But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

When those redemptive days are seen as periods of a thousand years, the pattern begins to unfold.

1. The Seven-Day Blueprint: Comparing Creation and Redemption

The foundation of the Divine Countdown is the "Law of Inversion" established in 2 Peter 3:8: “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” By this divine logic, the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest (the Week of Creation) serve as the literal blueprint for 7,000 years of human history (the Week of Redemption).

The Week of Creation and the Week of Redemption

So now we chart the week of redemption: seven thousand-year days laid across history. Six have run since Adam fell, and the seventh has not begun.

Day

The Week of Creation (Genesis 1-2)

The Week of Redemption (Human History)

Day 1

Separation of Light from Darkness.

Man’s sin and darkness separate him from God’s light.

Day 2

The Waters Divided.

The Flood: Waters divide the old world from the new; 8 souls saved.

Day 3

Plant Life Created.

Abraham is called: The Father of the Olive, Fig, and Vine.

Day 4

Sun, Moon, and Stars for signs/seasons.

Elijah to Jesus: Era of signs; Jesus as the "Sun" and full Godhead.

Day 5

Birds and Fish: "Be fruitful and multiply."

Pentecost: The "Fishers of Men" and the Holy Spirit (Dove). No longer earthbound in life form.

Day 6

Creation of Eve (Adam’s Bride).

Preparation of the Bride of Christ. Believers "eat of the truths of Israel" (1 Cor 10:11) to mature.

Day 7

Sabbath Rest: God enjoys His creation.

The 1,000-Year Millennium: Earth’s rest and the visible reign of Christ.

This blueprint allows us to discern with absolute precision where we currently stand on the timeline. The clock is no longer silent.

And now the inversion

Now somebody is going to say, what if the millennium is only one day and not a thousand years? Because Peter gives it both ways in the same verse: one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

So take it either way and you get the same result. That's the divine law of inversion. And the prophet Hosea does exactly that: he talks in days, but he is actually talking in one thousand year spans of time, speaking of the span from the time Jesus came too the earth the first time until he comes the second timeascension to the restoration.

Hosea 5:15; 6:1-3 I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the former and latter rain to the earth.

Now look at the verses. "I will return again to My place." That speaks of Jesus returning to his place at the ascension, and it gives us the starting point of the clock from inside the text itself, not from a date we have chosen. He says, "till they acknowledge their offense," so the condition of his return is their acknowledgement. And then, "In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me."

"After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up." One day is with the Lord as a thousand years. So after two days - two thousand years - He will revive us, and on the third day (the Millennium) He will raise us up.

This third day is also God’s Millennial rest - Revelation 20:2-7 - to enjoy his creation in loving relationship and in redemption. Six days of work, and then a day that is blessed and set apart. So that seventh thousand-year day is still in front of us.

Let us have a look at what the Millennium Will Actually Look Like (Isaiah chapters 11 and 12 and Isaiah 65

Isaiah 65:21-22 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit...

Socioeconomic Stability: Citizens will build their own houses and plant their own vineyards, enjoying the fruit of their labor without fear of loss.

Absolute Justice: Governance will be perfect, with absolute justice executed instantly, removing the corruption that plagues modern systems.

Natural Pacification: The "curse" of the fall is reversed; the natural world is pacified, with the wolf living alongside the lamb

So there is restoration even in the ordinary things of life - work, longevity, justice and creation itself. So that's the millennium. But the promise to Abraham doesn't finish there.

The Final Transition: from Canaan to the Cosmos

The Bible says in Romans 8 that the whole creation is waiting for this. It's groaning:

Romans 8:19, 22 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God... For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now.

And Paul makes the expansion very clear in Romans 4:13 when he describes Abraham as the heir of the world - kosmos. So the promise was never going to finish with one piece of land. In Christ it opens out until the inheritance is the renewed creation itself.

That is why Jesus can say, "the meek shall inherit the earth." He is not cancelling the promise to Abraham; he is showing us where it was ultimately going.

After the Millennium the heavenly Jerusalem descends to the earth and the new heavens and new Earth are forever established to flourish from age to age

The Living Connection: the Olive Tree and the Vine

Now I just want to come back to the vine before we close. The olive tree tells us where we belong in God's covenant story. But the vine speaks of intimacy - abiding, menō, in Christ and his life flowing through us. The olive tree gives us a share in the promises; the vine speaks of how we live in that inheritance and bear its fruit. When you're abiding in the vine, you're flowing in the life.

And just notice Joel before we finish. The fig tree and the vine are stripped and then restored, the former and latter rain comes, and finally the language changes from an untimely fig to a harvest that is ripe. So the same pattern is there again - the trees, the rain, the ripening and the harvest.

So just in closing, let's go back to where we started. One man, in a desert, and a promise about a seed. Everything since has been the working out of that one promise - the branches broken off and grafted in again, the fig tree revived, and finally the restoration of all things. It is not a sequence of corrections. It is a strategy.

And it ends with the same picture made whole: the fig tree ripened, the original branches grafted back into the olive tree, and both drawing from the promise that began with Abraham.

And Paul finishes Romans 11 by saying:

Romans 11 For God has imprisoned all humanity in their disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone and give them all his pardon of freedom. Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the LORD's thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice? And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory in the Church.

Mercy on everyone. That's the final climax of the grand design - the triumph of divine mercy over human disobedience and the restoration of all things in the new creation.

So when you look out at a world marked by division and shifting borders, can you see the powerful, quiet triumph of a mercy that intends to restore the entire world?

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This episode explores Revelation chapters 6 and 7, focusing on the opening of the sixth seal and the distinction between human-made suffering and the wider calamities described in the biblical text. It begins with the instability, conflict and economic pressure affecting ordinary people, before considering how these conditions relate to the events described in Revelation.

The sixth seal is examined alongside the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, with further connections to Daniel, Exodus and the story of Noah. The episode also looks at the repeated three-and-a-half-year period found throughout Revelation, the image of the church being carried on eagles’ wings, and the theme of protection during times of upheaval and persecution.

Attention then turns to the great multitude in Revelation 7, the promise of comfort after suffering, and the meaning of Jubilee as a picture of release, restoration and provision. The episode closes with a reflection on patience, discernment and the importance of remaining steady and supportive of one another during uncertain times.

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The Spiritual Treadmill and the Life of Grace Or Salvation: Our Two Identities
Scott Kardash
19th July 2026
Introduction: Two Identities
I named this talk "The Spiritual Treadmill and the Life of Grace," and today I want to contrast both of these. The song we heard talked about letting go. That represents the left-hand side... the treadmill that we're on. I had a little alternate title: "From Striving to Flow: Our Two Identities," because we all live out of two identities. It's a matter of moving from one identity, our old self, to our new self. In my view, that is in fact what salvation is all about.
We have a bit of a different view of salvation which has been taught, particularly in the Western church. If we step back and think about it, what actually is the gospel? What is the good news? If someone asked you today, "What's the gospel? What's the good news?" your answer might be a bit different to what's commonly taught... or even preached... today.
Let me give you an example, because some of us might have heard a version of it that goes a little bit like this: "God is sending you all to hell forever. Well, unless Jesus stops him, of course. And that's the good news."
It's a caricature, obviously. No-one actually says it quite like that, but it's a little clip just to give you an example. It's a fear-based gospel presenting an angry God, not a God of love, but an angry and unforgiving God. Now, God tells us to forgive even our enemies, but this view says, no, God can't forgive. There's actually something wrong with this picture.
The Impact of a Fear-Based Gospel
I lived in Japan for three years. Some of you may know that Japan is only about 1% Christian. It's not because there haven't been missionaries going there; there have been. But it has something to do with the Japanese culture, and even the broader Asian culture, where they revere their ancestors. In fact, they have these ceremonies where they practice ancestor worship. When their ancestors were alive, they didn't hear this gospel, so they didn't know Jesus. For them to accept this modern Western gospel message is essentially to condemn all their ancestors to hell forever. So, it goes down like a bit of a lead balloon, as you can imagine. It's not well received.
It can be experienced a little bit like this: picture Jesus knocking on the door of our heart... which is a misquote of Revelation 3:20... and the little guy inside saying, "Well, why should I let you in?" And Jesus replies, "Because of what I'll do to you if you don't." It comes across a bit like a threat. Where is this loving God that we're talking about? I think it's a complete distortion of what the gospel actually is.
Paul's Gospel to the Gentiles
If we look at Paul the apostle, his job was to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Jesus preached to the Jews... His mission was for the Jews first, then the Gentiles. So Paul went and preached to the Gentiles. Not many people realise that Paul didn't even mention the word "hell." He didn't even mention it. He wrote most of the New Testament and didn't mention the word hell. He talked about judgment, and Jesus did warn the Jews about Gehenna... which is a physical place outside Jerusalem with a very shady past... and he talked about outer darkness, and John warned about the lake of fire. Paul... I'm sure he will cover the lake of fire in his upcoming Revelation series if he hasn't already, and talk more about its purpose.
But there's a good example in Acts 17 where Paul is preaching on Mars Hill. You might remember when he talks to the men of Athens. He doesn't go up there and say, "Turn or burn forever." He doesn't say that. He says, and I'll quote, "God is not far from each one of us, for we are all God's offspring. The times of ignorance God overlooked. God now commands all men everywhere to repent"... which means to turn to him. "He has appointed a day in which He will be judging the habitable earth in righteousness by a man he has appointed"... which is Jesus. And listen to this: "...offering faith to all by raising him from the dead."
I want to pick up on this phrase later... "offering faith to all." This is something very much in line with what Paul's been talking about.
The Modern Transactional View vs. True Transformation
The common, modern-day process of salvation goes something like this: you'll likely begin with a prayer. More often than not, before you know what's happening, you'll be asked to pray at the end of a meeting. You'll be asked to "repeat after me" and just say these words. The words might include a declaration of future repentance, but that's optional. But repentance isn't something we say we will do; repentance is something we do. It's not a verbal promise, it's an action.
Once you say this prayer, you're then deemed to be saved. People will ask, "When were you saved?" and you'll say, "Well, I was saved on the day I said that prayer." It's a very common view, presenting salvation as a finishing point rather than a starting point. What I want to put to you today is that making that declaration is actually just the starting point.
Here is a bit of a challenge. The proposition is: to be saved from hell, you say this prayer, and you're now saved from eternal punishment. Try to find a passage in the Bible that talks about hell where this is the criteria for not going there. It's pretty hard to find. I can tell you the passages that talk about hell don't talk about some sort of verbal declaration. Under that view, salvation becomes a legal transaction where God is now obliged not to send you to hell forever. You were just lucky enough to find the legal loophole before you died, whilst most won't find it.
Unfortunately, this can lead to an attitude that sin doesn't matter, or "cheap grace," as it's known. Some of the most devastating moral failures occur in church leadership and congregations. I suspect this kind of mindset contributes to the problem. People think, "I said the prayer, I'm saved, I'm not going to hell, so what does it matter?" Sin does matter, because it damages us and it damages the people around us. As we will see later, it's evidence that we're operating out of the wrong, false identity.
Unpacking John 3:16 and Perishing
Here's the classic "ticket to heaven" verse, John 3:16. We can probably all recite it: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that everyone who is believing in him should not perish but have eternal life."
A couple of things here. "Believing" is the translation, but Paul would have covered pistis with you... to have faith. It's talking about having faith. It's not a matter of, "Did I believe hard enough so that I'm not going to perish?" No, it's about having faith. Paul has talked about having faith in Christ to allow the faith of Christ to flow.
People often conflate perishing with judgment and eternal punishment. But actually, this word "perish" in the Greek is apollumi. It's the exact same word used for "lost" in the stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son. It doesn't mean "destroyed beyond existence" or "beyond redemption." In Luke 15, which contains those three parables, the father of the prodigal son says, "Listen to this: my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost"... was perishing, same word... "and is found." To perish doesn't mean to cease to exist.
People often conflate judgment with perishing and endless punishment in hell without any hope of redemption. But we're talking about God's righteous judgment, and God's judgment always has a righteous purpose.
What is Eternal Life?
What is eternal life? The picture many of us have had is sitting on a cloud in heaven playing a harp, thinking, "What am I going to do for the rest of eternity? Will it get boring?" Well, actually, your eternal destiny isn't up in heaven. Where is it, Zara? Where will we be eternally?
Zara: New Jerusalem.
Speaker: New Jerusalem, exactly... the new earth. Our destiny is actually here. Jesus will return here as King. Heaven is just a waiting room until he returns. We're not going to stay up there forever sitting on a cloud playing a harp; that is a waiting room.
Fortunately, Jesus defined eternal life for us. He said, "This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." So, eternal life is not about the length of time. We have this Western mentality that eternal life means a long period of existing alive. No, it's about the quality of life. It's about knowing God. The word "eternal" is actually translated from the Greek term aionios, which means "of an age." It doesn't inherently mean endless. But when it got translated into Latin... which is where a lot of Western doctrine comes from... the Latin word used really did mean endless eternity. We've lost some of the nuances of the original language in our English translations.
It is an age of life where God is the source of our life. In Jesus' view, salvation stops being a transaction to avoid punishment and becomes the process we go through to know God and experience this life. Salvation isn't just a one-time event or a prayer; it's a process.
The Post-Pentecost Reality
I think this leads to one of the most startling verses in the Bible. How can we actually know God? Paul tells the Corinthian church that he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. That's quite amazing. When did this become possible? It only became possible at a certain period of human history: after Pentecost. God said, "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh." We now have the Holy Spirit. Prior to Pentecost, they didn't have the indwelling Holy Spirit in the same way; they were dealing with rules, regulations, and laws to try to be good or obedient enough. After Pentecost, we are equipped with the Holy Spirit for a transformation process. We're moving way beyond the concept of just wanting to escape punishment or go to heaven forever. We're talking about a total transformation.
Does anybody remember what I presented last time? It was in November last year. It's all right, because I didn't remember either! Yes, Barbara? Do we have an award for Barbara?
Very good, Barbara. Paul and I did a series on the Ten Commandments, and the summary was about living by the law... what they used to have to do to live up to those commandments. Today, we flip those commandments completely through the Holy Spirit into a transformed life. Instead of "don't steal," it becomes "be a generous giver." Everything is flipped from "don't do this" to "do the opposite." That is the transformed life available to us because we have the Holy Spirit, the spirit that heals and reshapes us.
The Three Dimensions of Salvation
Today I want to build upon that concept and pick up on some of the things Paul has been talking about recently. I'll reuse one chart from my last talk, which highlights the fact that we are spirit, soul, and body.
Our spirit has been saved in the past... Jesus accomplished that for us.
Our soul is being saved now... that is present tense, and that's what the healing of the soul is all about. It's the ongoing transformation process.
* Our body will be saved at the resurrection, when we receive our new bodies.
That is the complete salvation process from soup to nuts. To say "I was saved on this date"... well, okay, but that was just the beginning of the journey.
The Two Operating Systems: Striving vs. Dependence
We live in a culture obsessed with life hacks and self-optimisation. It's incredibly easy to drag this exhausting striving straight into our walk with God, treating holiness as a behavioural self-improvement project. Does that sound familiar?
I know kids who are on their devices all the time, with constant, on-demand entertainment. They never have a chance to get bored. I tell them that boredom is a necessary ingredient for creativity. If you're constantly receiving input, you can't be creative because there's no space for it. We can get trapped in the exact same exhausting treadmill... like a hamster wheel... where we're striving to be better and trying to fix our flaws. "Oh, I keep doing this and I need to stop." It becomes exhausting. We are running on the wheel but getting nowhere.
Why does that happen? Because we operate out of two distinct operating systems. The first is the system of self-reliance. Picture a rigid, geometric tree of self-reliance, which represents the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden. On the other side, we have the flowing tree of dependence. As believers, we often operate out of both, but the goal of salvation is to shift from the left to the right.
Living out of the system of dependence results in an organic union and spontaneous fruit, modelling Jesus, who only did what he saw the Father doing. But dependence requires trust... or believing loyalty. It's much harder for us to let go, like the song was saying, and trust. We'd rather be self-dependent and ensure everything is controlled. Andrew was talking about OCD earlier, and that is essentially a striving to control everything around us. We need to let go.
I call the system on the left the "old self." I couldn't think of a name for the one on the right at first. What could the one on the right be called? The "new self." Okay, that's a good label!
Crucifixion, Not Rehabilitation
Looking at the old self, it cannot be upgraded or rehabilitated; it must be crucified. That is a pretty startling statement. When we operate out of the old self... which the Bible often refers to as the flesh... trying to fix it is like trying to dress up a corpse to make it look good. Our old self must die so our new self can live. There is no resurrection without crucifixion. We have to die first before we can be born again.
We all go through two births and two deaths. We are born physically and we die physically. We also have to die spiritually to be born again spiritually. Everybody will go through this process at some point.
Paul talks about this specifically in Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
Notice he says, "I have been crucified." It's past tense and decisive. Paul talked in one of his recent sermons about this being ontologically true... it is objectively true. It's just that it is often hidden from us, or we fail to acknowledge it. The old system is finished. The old self has been put to death, and we have a new source of life. It is Christ living in us, requiring a present and continuous dependence... a believing loyalty. You can see the echoes of John 3:16 rephrased here: living by faith in the Son of God who loved us.
Dead people don't require a more rigorous rule book; they lack the capacity to be resuscitated. When someone dies physically, their body is still there, but their life force... their spirit... is gone. You cannot rehabilitate a corpse. It is an error to think we can reform the old man. We see many religions trying to do exactly that... trying to perform better, strive harder, and follow rules. That's the old man. We don't need a rehabilitation programme to dress up a corpse; we require an entirely different kind of life. As Paul says in Ephesians 2, we were dead in our trespasses. We need to shift from a corrupted identity to an entirely new species.
On the left, you have a protective castle driven by self-protection, hiding, performance, and control, cut off from the primal source of life. Who is that primal source? Jesus. He is sustaining us all right now. There is nothing about us that he doesn't actively sustain, but we need that spiritual awakening. The model on the right is a creation model, not an evolutionary upgrade of the old flesh. It's a complete paradigm shift. The old self has to die. As Paul told the Corinthians: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."
The Faith of Christ
Let's talk about our faith allowing Christ's faith to flow. Paul previously shared a crude diagram of this, which I've significantly improved, and I'll let him use it whenever he wants! He'll probably listen to this recording, so I'm sure he'll follow up.
In modern translations, many verses are translated as faith in Christ rather than the faith of Christ. That comes down to the theological bias of the translators. Every translation acts like a tightly worded commentary. Because there are far more English words than Greek words, they have to choose the word that fits their doctrine. If they believe it's purely your personal faith in Christ doing the heavy lifting, they will translate the phrase pistis Christou that way. But it is actually the faith of Christ.
Remember what Paul said to the men of Athens: Jesus is "offering faith to all." Paul was saying this to Gentiles who knew nothing about Jesus until Paul opened his mouth. The faith of Christ is the very environment of God's grace. Our faith in Christ is simply the valve. It allows God's faith to anchor us and his Spirit to flow into our spirit, connecting with our soul. Our soul then becomes the expression of our spirit. Relational authenticity and believing loyalty to our King is what biblical faith is all about.
The proclamation of the gospel originally meant the declaration of a new King. That's the good news: we have a new King, so swear allegiance to Him. Isaiah 45 says: "By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance." That is the end state God saw for humanity. It's not forced submission; it's a voluntary allegiance once everyone finally sees who the King of the cosmos actually is.
As Paul writes in Corinthians, once all that is done and Jesus has reconciled the world to himself, he hands the kingdom back to God the Father. That is the ultimate end of the story, where God is "all in all"... all things in all people. In Revelation, you see people in the lake of fire, but that isn't the final chapter. The end of the story is when God becomes all in all.
Inside-Out Transformation
As Peter Carbless would say, when we're "fair dinkum" with God, we step out of the anxiety of daily performance reviews. (I like using Peter for Australian slang because he's Greek... it's a nice flip, he should be teaching us Greek instead of Aussie English!)
Under the old operating system, we try to improve our quality of being through an upward movement. We try to set external boundaries and learn rules, hoping they will eventually change our heart. That's the Ten Commandments approach. You use the rules to manage behaviour.
I tell my kids they have to wake up early, so they set an alarm. Zara had to work at 6:00 this morning at the bakery. Her alarm went off, and what did she do? Went straight back to sleep! She was operating under a rule. She didn't set the alarm because she passionately wanted to wake up; she set it because she had to. The alarm clock became the rigid focus. She wasn't responding to the internal reality of needing to be at the bakery.
God works the exact opposite way. The old man works from the rules upward. God starts at the very top: the quality of being. He begins with an internal infusion of divine life. He joins his Spirit to our spirit. How do we access this? We turn the valve of faith. That transformation then affects our principles. We receive a new nature that naturally understands God's ways, and the external boundaries become completely obvious. We want to do what is right because our core identity has changed, not because we're managed by a checklist. Sin management attempts to fix the perimeter to heal the core. God heals the core, and the perimeter naturally aligns.
True Fruit vs. Dead Works
Let's talk about works. People often say, "I'm a good person." But who is actually good? No-one. We can manufacture good actions out of self-reliance, but they are still dead works. Who is truly good? Jesus. We could copy his actions perfectly, but if they come out of the old self, they are just forced labour. True good works are a natural fruit blossoming out of our new life in him. We become his masterpiece.
Galatians 5:22 says: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit."
We can exhibit nice attributes from either operating system, but the source is what matters. If they come out of the old man, they are dead works. This is why the author of Hebrews talks about "repentance from dead works." It's not just repenting of obviously bad things; it's repenting of the good things we tried to manufacture out of our own fleshly identity.
Summary of the Framework
To pull this framework together, let's contrast the two systems:
The Old Man (Flesh) The New Man (Spirit) Self-protective castle New creation & resurrection life Performance-led striving Absolute rest & conjoined union Adam (Dust of the earth) Christ (The life-giving spirit) Pre-Pentecost (External law) Post-Pentecost (Indwelling Spirit) Damaged, unhealed soul Healed, transformed soul False identity / Dead works True identity / Fruit of the Spirit When we operate out of the new man, our desires naturally become his desires. Instead of praying for a new model Porsche because our current one is out of date, we pray into his desires. That's what the Lord's Prayer is all about.
We all have a damaged soul that needs healing. This transition from a damaged soul to a healed soul is what the present process of salvation is. We often believe a false identity ("This is just who I am, I can't help it"), but we need to move into our true identity in him.
I have gathered a lot of scripture that maps this out, and I'll share the slides later. Please be like a Berean: don't just accept what someone says from a pulpit. Check the scriptures to see if these things map out accurately. Look at Ephesians 4, which tells us to put off the old self, renew our minds, and put on the new self. Scripture is full of this paradigm. It is completely different from simply saying a sinner's prayer and assuming you're completely done. This is a call to total transformation.
Application: Presence Prayer
How do we apply these principles? We begin with presence prayer. Paul recently put up a brilliant six-episode series on the Uncreated YouTube channel about this. The goal of presence prayer is to restore us to the exact purpose for which we were created: full communion with God. Jesus prayed, "That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us." That is full, beautiful integration.
Our primary responsibility is simply to open the valve of faith and allow the life of Christ to flow. When you notice yourself slipping into striving, stop. Take a physical breath, open your lungs, and receive his grace like oxygen.
To close, I'll share the Peter Carbless translation of Romans 5: "Therefore, since we have all of our ducks in a row because we are fair dinkum with God, we have peace with God. We stand and we rejoice in the hope and glory of God."
That is what salvation is all about. It's not a transaction you did once at the back of a church building years ago.
My mother used to get up at 3:00 am and sit in a small study chair. Sometimes she had a Bible on her lap, sometimes she didn't. I'd come home at all hours, see her there, and ask, "What are you doing? Are you praying?" She would always say, "No, I'm just waiting on the Lord." She didn't have a laundry list of demands. She was simply waiting on the Lord actively and deliberately. That is what presence prayer is.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray.
Lord, bring us into the full communication and organic union for which we were created—the secure reality where we are already seated together with you in finished victory and absolute rest. We simply thank you as we permit your life to flow through us, naturally growing your beautiful fruit and transforming us into a healing presence for everyone around us. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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REVELATION EP5 - Martyrs and Grace and The Bride

Today, we are continuing our deep dive into the Book of Revelation with Episode Five: Martyrs and Grace.

When we look at the opening of the Fifth Seal, we encounter the souls under the altar. But there's a profound theological shift we need to make here. Martyrdom isn't just a historical tragedy; it's a structural witness. In the original Greek, the word for witness is Martys—the two concepts are linguistically identical. It’s about a shared life passing through suffering to display something far deeper.

I’ve wanted to sit down and untangle these theological concepts for years, getting them into proper historical and scriptural order once and for all. In this episode, we do a bit of a reality check on the concept of the "Antichrist." The word actually never appears in the Book of Revelation. More importantly, the Greek prefix anti- doesn't mean "against"—it means "instead of." We're looking at a system of substitution rather than outright opposition, and understanding that linguistic nuance completely changes how we view the prophetic timeline.

We also trace the fascinating convergence of history and theology since the 1517 Reformation. We unpack the architectural blueprint of the six foundational principles found in Hebrews 6—moving from metanoia (a total shift of the mind, rather than just external penance) to the four distinct historical dimensions of baptism, the laying on of hands, and the high-authority realities of resurrection and judgment.

Ultimately, this trajectory points toward telios—the Greek concept of full maturity and completion. It’s not about rigid, moral perfectionism, but a deep, structural reliance on a larger divine framework. It’s a massive paradigm shift that completely changes the way we look at where history is heading.

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Revelation Ep 4: Seven Seals - Wars and Much More
In this episode we continue our journey through the Seven Seals of Revelation, taking a closer look at the first four horsemen and considering how they relate to the unfolding events of history.

We explore the White Horse as a picture of Christ preparing His Bride, the Red Horse and the growing loss of peace among the nations, and the contrast between the sword of human conflict and the sword of God’s truth that brings light, discernment and transformation.

The episode also revisits Ezekiel 38, discussing Gog and Magog and why this remarkable prophecy may still point to a future fulfilment, while reflecting on how it fits within the wider biblical story.

Finally, we consider the Black Horse and the Pale Horse in the context of economic uncertainty, war, disease and global instability, before finishing with the encouragement of Psalm 91. Throughout the discussion, the emphasis remains on hope rather than fear, inviting us to cultivate discernment, confidence in God’s faithfulness, and a deeper awareness of His presence as we anticipate Christ’s return together as a church family.

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Podcast Summary: Revelation – The Heavenly Prelude and the Opening of the Seven Seals

This episode introduces the opening of the seven seals in the Book of Revelation, beginning with the heavenly throne-room vision of Revelation 4. Before any judgments unfold on earth, John is taken into heaven where he sees God’s throne, surrounded by worship, twenty-four elders, and four living creatures. This scene establishes God’s absolute sovereignty over everything that follows.

The speaker presents the view that John’s heavenly guide is Enoch, based on references in Jude and Revelation, and argues that Revelation from chapter 4 onward describes events that occur after John’s lifetime, supporting a futurist interpretation of the book.

The twenty-four elders are understood to represent God’s covenant leadership—twelve leaders of Israel and the twelve apostles. The four living creatures symbolise key aspects of Christ’s ministry:

• Lion – Christ the conquering King.
• Ox – Christ the humble Servant.
• Man – Christ’s compassionate humanity.
• Eagle – Christ’s heavenly perspective and exaltation.

Revelation 5 introduces the sealed scroll, containing God’s end-time purposes. Only Christ can open its seven seals. Each seal, once opened, remains active until Christ’s return, progressively unfolding God’s redemptive judgments upon the earth.

The speaker gives an overview of the seven seals:

• First Seal – White Horse: Represents the victorious Church, beginning with the Reformation in 1517, restoring the truths of faith and grace and progressively preparing the Bride of Christ.
• Second Seal – Red Horse: Represents war and the removal of peace from the earth, beginning with the world wars and continuing until Armageddon.
• Third Seal – Black Horse: Symbolises economic hardship, inflation, and famine.
• Fourth Seal – Pale Horse: Brings widespread death through war, disease, pestilence, and societal collapse.
• Fifth Seal: The cry of the martyrs for justice.
• Sixth Seal: Cosmic disturbances and worldwide upheaval.
• Seventh Seal: Opens the seven trumpet judgments.

The episode also connects Revelation with Daniel 12, where the prophetic book is sealed until “the time of the end,” identified by unprecedented global travel and a dramatic increase in knowledge. The speaker suggests today’s world—particularly the rise of artificial intelligence—fits this description and highlights the moral responsibility to use knowledge wisely.

Isaiah 29 is presented as another prophecy of a sealed book, linking Israel’s present spiritual blindness with future restoration under the New Covenant. The discussion emphasizes that the final events of Revelation will profoundly affect three groups:

1. The Church, through testing and purification.
2. Israel, through judgment and eventual restoration.
3. The kingdom of the Beast, through God’s final judgments.

The episode concludes by focusing on the hopeful message of the White Horse. Rather than symbolising deception, it is presented as Christ leading His Church through progressive restoration toward becoming the spotless Bride described in Revelation 19. Despite increasing global conflict, God is preparing a triumphant Church that will finish its race in victory before Christ’s return.

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THE FLOW OF GRACE AND FAITH

The Gift of God’s Grace shifts the burden of spiritual growth from us to the divine Creator God – and the very logos DNA design of being a New Creation in Christ makes the pursuit of holiness no longer a behavioural project but the natural manifestation of a new grace-filled nature. Grace is not an add on to become more spiritual - it is the Primal Source and the genetic blueprint of the New Creation.

Ephesians 2:4-10 (ESV)
4. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5. even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— Paul says that before Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit all of humanity was in a state of being "dead in trespasses." it is a description of a state of spiritual being - dead-end. We once were lost (vs 1-3) but now are found in Christ. He says we were trying to achieve spiritual output from a dead-end source without the life of Jesus.
A dead-end nature cannot rehabilitate itself; it require a different kind of life entirely.
If a person does not have a revelation of being reconciled katalasso –being conjoined in spirit with the Spirit of God and made partakers of the divine nature.
No behavioural modification bridges the chasm between Old Creation consciousness and Spiritual age to age life. This state of total "Deadness" demands faith in the divine intervention that is above and beyond the human system.

1. and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The Divine Initiative of God was an act of death and resurrection for our sakes that was entirely apart from human faith, obedience, or response. God acted out of love to give his life to humanity. This was the act of universal reconciliation – katalasso – the divine outcome of the incarnation of Jesus and his death and resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit. But for it to become a conscious reality for us it requires our faith in that act of divine reconciliation.
   Paul calls us a New Creation – a creation model and not an evolution model – not trying to improve the old one.
   This is not just some legal status but a spiritual merger where the individual is woven into the life of the Divine. This union is categorized by three specific dimensions of being "Together with Christ". Verses 5 and 6
   Made alive together: The new life-essence that terminates the state of deadness.
   Raised up together: The elevation into a higher state of being. The word id ontology.
   Seated together: The establishment of a new position of authority and rest, centred in the divine life rather than human effort.

2. so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9. not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

This Gift of Grace shifts the burden of spiritual growth from us to the divine Creator God – and the very logos DNA design of being a New Creation makes the pursuit of holiness no longer a behavioural project but the natural manifestation of a new nature. Grace is not an add on to become more spiritual - it is the Primal Source and the genetic blueprint of the New Creation.

The way this New Creation model works is by shifting from "trying to acquire grace " to "permitting the flow of grace " In the old framework, we try to earn or generate spiritual value. In the New Creation model, we acknowledge that the grace life-force is already in effect. This is the "Logos logic" (vs.8) of Paul – see also in Romans 5.
Romans 5:2. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God

Faith does not create grace; it accesses a pre-existing faith/grace system because Grace is the gift of the act of Divine Universal Reconciliation.Faith is the how-to of Access: Faith is not an achievement that produces salvation. It is the process of conscious agreement of letting the grace and faith OF Jesus flow from our spirit to our soul. It is the act of not frustrating the grace but allowing Spirit life to manifest through to the human soul as though through a pipeline connection. The operation of our faith is simply turning on the valve of the ‘faith of God’ and not resisting or frustrating the flow of grace – and for this we are accountable.

In the diagram - there is a red and yellow vertical line that represents Jesus bringing his human and divine Holy Spirit life into the life of humanity, represented by a horizontal purple pipeline. At that point there is a yellow circle representing the fullness of the grace (gift) of God’s life. That life begins to flow from left to right as a pipeline of the grace of God right to the end where there is a bubble that represents our soul.
Halfway along the pipeline there is a yellow circle which represents a ‘faith valve’. That faith valve is where our faith in Christ is able to turn on or off the faith OF Christ and either maintain or frustrate the flow of grace to our soul.

Galatians 2:20 And the life I now live in the flesh (the embodiment of my soul) I live by the faith OF the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness (alignment with God) were through the law, then Christ has died in vain

Our soul bubble at the end will either be filled with a grace-filled hatch of yellow and purple or by stark lines of our own human effort. It is in our soul bubble where we meet the outside world – seen for who we are in our emotional and cognitive and spiritual life, along with the signs of bodily stress or calm. It will reflect a self-willfulness that has frustrated the grace or a self willingness that reflects the grace that puts God on display in our life.

Our faith is not merely a personal belief in Christ, but belief in the faith OF Christ - Christ's own faith and life already operating within us.
Galatians 2:16"Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ..." Again:"...that we might be justified by the faith of Christ."
Galatians 3:22 The scriptures have concluded all under sin, that the promise by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to us who believe - our faith participates.
Ephesians 3:12 In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him." (KJV)
Philippians 3:9"not having mine own righteousness... but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith."
Romans 3:22"Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe."
9. Revelation 14:12 "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
10. Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith."
11. Phil. 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good purpose.
12. Phil 1:6 he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion …because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace.

Our faith is therefore not an independent human achievement but a sharing in the faith life of the Son through the indwelling Spirit. Spiritual health is not about "getting" more of God’s life but about accessing and "permitting the flow of the fulness of God’s life" by turning on the tap of faith for the flow of grace that is already provided. This is perhaps the deepest implication of Paul's repeated phrase, "the faith of Christ”.Top of Form

1. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

This distinction introduces a new ledger of accountability. Under the old human performance framework, people are judged by their willpower to adhere to external rules in honouring God. Under the New Creation model, the only measure of accountability is our access to the provided age-to-age life. This demolishes self-effort religion, as it proves that a legal pardon only juggles the ledger, whereas an ontological shift (a change in essential being) changes our very nature itself. This internal mechanism of faith naturally leads to the external manifestation of what Paul calls God’s Workmanship (vs.19)

The doing of "good works" is the natural fruit of a new nature rather than the "forced labour" of the old self. In this model, we can function as a "display case" for divine grace. This is the ultimate Workmanship (poema): Holiness becomes the spontaneous outward display of an internal change of a divine/human species, where the divine life is literally woven into the fabric of our spirit in the new mind and the new heart. This integration is the only process capable of the "salvation of the soul"—a feat that legal pardon is structurally unable to achieve. That’s why I run the course.

Old Self Framework (Effort) New Creation Framework (Expression) Frustrating the Spirit through strain
"Being still" and "flowing"
This "Expression Over Effort" model is the subjecting of self-will to God’s will. When this happens the strain of religious performance is replaced by the natural "flowing" of the New Creation. This ceasing of self-will is the terminal point of the old nature and the realization of the soul's salvation. It is called Repentance from dead works. (Hebrews 6:1)
The life of the Creator is woven into the very fabric of our mind (1Corinthians 2:16). This is not a psychological adjustment; it is a structural reality. Please understand!
Superseding the Rehabilitation Myth: We must stop attempting to improve the old nature through more persuasive social rules. What was dead accepts a katalasso reconciled life
Cultivating Permission over Performance: The goal of spiritual growth is the "being still" that allows the life of Christ to become the prime mover, resulting in the natural expression of the New Creation.
The "rest of the New Creation" is realized only when we stop trying to improve the old self and begins letting the New Creation live through us. When the strain of self-resurrection ends, the authentic life of the New Species begins.

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JUSTIFIED BY FAITH
The interpretative architecture we bring to a text like Paul’s letter to the Romans is rarely a blank blueprint. Rather, it is a complex structure built from our personal histories, denominational filters, and cultural assumptions. When we engage with the Word, we enter a dialogue where our previous understandings collide with ancient truth. Often, we are so familiar with the vocabulary that we lose the weight of the wisdom.
As a student of the text, you must move beyond the "commonplace" view of the Bible and rediscover a sense of awe for this verifiable record of universal reality. As the source suggests:
"It’s better to have wrong reverence than no reverence... familiarity breeds contempt. We don’t know how to revere this resource we’ve got."
In Romans 5:1, the word "therefore" serves as the architectural bridge between the "cage-rattling" arguments of the first four chapters and the new reality of the Gospel. Paul’s intent in the opening chapters is to "rattle the cages" of both the pagan world and the religious establishment. He levels the playing field by demonstrating that, whether religious or not, we are all a "pack of rat bags" and "muddlers" who have fallen short. The "therefore" signifies that because our own performance has failed to rectify the "shocking mess" of our condition, a new authority has intervened.
With the structural failure of human effort exposed, we transition to the formal proclamation that establishes a new kingdom.
2. The Gospel as Proclamation: Authority Precedes Policy
In the Roman world, an Evangelion (Gospel) was not a religious suggestion or a self-help tip; it was a formal, political announcement. It carried the weight of: "The King is dead, long live the King!" It was the proclamation of who was now in authority. We must distinguish between the "Gospel"—the fact of the King’s Lordship—and "Policy"—the way that King decides to run his kingdom.
The Evangelion (The Core)
The Policy (The Working Out)
Jesus is Lord
The Forgiveness of Sins
Proclamation of Authority
The Reconciliation of the World
The synthesis here is vital: the forgiveness of sins is not a standalone "product" you buy; it is a policy that is only possible because Jesus has been established as Lord. He is the one in charge, and He has decided that the new reality is defined by reconciliation. Policy never exists in a vacuum; it flows from the character of the Sovereign.
This transition from old systems to the new Lordship demands a shift in how we relate to the King—a move from abstract belief to a "fair dinkum" trust.
3. Redefining Faith: From Abstract Belief to "Fair Dinkum" Trustworthiness
Modernity has diluted "faith" into "belief without evidence," but the linguistic journey from the Hebrew Emuna to the Greek Pistis reveals a sturdier concept. In the Australian vernacular, this is being "fair dinkum." It is a "no-nonsense," "no-BS" relationship characterized by loyalty and authenticity.
The architect of this faith was Abraham. Though he was a "muddler" who didn't always get it right, he was fair dinkum with God, and God was fair dinkum with him. This relationship involves three dimensions:
Trustworthiness/Loyalty: A "no-nonsense" commitment to the person of God, rather than a checklist of doctrines.
Authentic Connection: An honest, connected relationship where we stop pretending and simply "come home" to the one who knows us.
The Result (Justification): Having "all your ducks in a row." In the legal/accounting sense, to be "justified" is to have the books balanced and the records set right.
Crucially, the source identifies that this justification is Aorist. Unlike a "daily performance review" where your standing fluctuates based on your behavior, the Aorist tense signifies a once-and-for-all action. It is "locked-in" and completed. You are counted as "safe" and "in the right" because of the fair dinkum quality of your connection to the Lord.
Once our standing is "locked-in," we can move from the anxiety of "Sin Management" to a top-down understanding of divine Law.
4. The Three Dimensions of Alignment: A Hierarchy of Living
We often treat the Bible as a "Manual of Sin Management" or a "Crimes Act," viewing Law from the bottom up. However, the biblical concept of Torah (Greek: Nomos) is far more expansive. Think of it like someone asking, "Which way to Newport?" and you pointing your finger. Torah is the pointing; it is the "directional instruction" or "teaching" that shows the way the river flows.
God’s hierarchy of living moves from the internal to the external:
1. Quality of Life and Being: The internal infusion of divine life. This is the starting point.
2. Principles of Life: The "normative" (from Nomos) discernment of what is helpful or destructive, beyond mere legality.
3. Legal Boundaries: The external rules and regulations—the "Crimes Act" layer.
The "So What?" of this architecture is profound: Humanity tries to fix the Boundaries (external rules) to hopefully one day change their Quality of Being. God works in reverse. He infuses us with His life first. This new Quality of Being gives us the capacity to understand the Principles (the "ways" of God), which finally makes the Boundaries make sense.
This internal transformation is not a burdensome duty; it is the natural byproduct of Grace.
5. Grace as the Manifestation of Joy
The word Grace (Charis) is a member of the "Joy" (Chara) family of words. Grace is not just God "letting you get away with it"; it is the manifestation of God’s delight. When we look at Gifting (Charisma), we see the suffix -ma, which in Greek denotes the "effect" of something.
To understand this, consider the analogy of "Rain-ma." If the rain is God's joy, then the "ma" (the effect) is the wetness, the green grass, and the trees growing.
Grace (Charis) = The Manifestation of God's Joy.
* Gifting (Charisma) = The Effect (-ma) of that Joy bubbling over in the individual.
God caused you to exist because He thought you were a "great idea." His grace is the joyful blessing of a Father who is genuinely happy you have "come home." Your "gifts" are simply you having fun with God as His joy overflows through your unique personality.
This realization of God's delight brings us to the ultimate state of peace and reconciliation.
6. Summary: The Final Meditation
When we synthesize these redefined terms, Romans 5:1-2 ceases to be a cold legal contract and becomes a narrative of relational homecoming. We move from being "rat bags" in a mess to being sons and daughters with "all our ducks in a row." This isn't because we became perfect religious performers, but because we became "fair dinkum" with a King whose "policy" is joyous reconciliation.
The Reimagined Passage
"Therefore, since we have all of our ducks in a row because we are 'fair dinkum' with God, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access through this 'fair dinkum-ness' into the joyful, bountiful blessing in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God."

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REVELATION EP 2 SEVEN CHURCHES PROPHETIC DIMENSIONS
Two very well-known and very misunderstood chapters of the Bible in Revelation are chapters two and three of Revelation - The letters to the seven churches.

These letters are addressed to seven historical congregations in Asia Minor, and they reveal consequential spiritual conditions of rise and decline that appear throughout the Church in every age. Each letter follows a similar pattern: Christ identifies Himself, commends what is faithful, exposes what requires repentance, and promises a reward to those who overcome. Together they present a comprehensive picture of discipleship, warnings correction, and hope.
Taken together, the seven letters reveal Christ as the Lord of the Church, walking among His people, intimately aware of their strengths, failures, struggles, and victories. They demonstrate that faithfulness is measured not merely by outward success but by love, holiness, perseverance, truth, and dependence upon God. The letters also show that divine judgment begins with God’s own household, yet His purpose is restorative, calling believers to spiritual renewal in Christ and renewed communion with him and with one another. The futurist interpretation of Revelation is strengthened in these letters as Ephesus and Pergamos and Sardis and Thyatira and Philadelphia are all told by Jesus to be prepared for the coming of the Lord ‘behold I come’ in various tones, and Laodicea is told that he is actually standing at the door. The Holy Spirit is currently working to reverse the tragic consequence of many people’s abandonment of faith that has occurred over the years.

The repeated exhortation, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” transforms these letters from ancient correspondence into an ongoing universal call to all. Their central message is that Christ seeks a purified, faithful, overcoming people who will participate in the final triumph portrayed throughout the remainder of Revelation.
There is a fourfold multilayer architecture of how these letters function simultaneously as four distinct dimensions happening here in the one passage of text.

1. They are first century letters to congregations, from Jesus through John.
2. They are a blueprint of the entire church age.
3. They are a prophetic warning to the Church today about the End Times and the Coming of The Lord,
4. They are a spiritual map of the healing and salvation of the human soul.

This fourth dimension reframes how we personally interact with the letters as this is the inward spiritual application and the mirror of our soul’s journey. In this dimension there is an inward ongoing unveiling of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. These seven churches represent seven distinct conditions of the human soul in its journey toward full union with God.
Church Historical Period (approximate) Ephesus Apostolic Church (30–100 + AD) Discernment then loses first love Smyrna Persecuted Church (100+ –303) Trials10 years/Diocletian/worn down Pergamos Imperial Church (313–590 Marriage of church and state (Constantine) Thyatira Medieval Church (590–1517 Pagan superstition/Jezebel) Sardis Reformation Church (1517–1900 faith, division, deadness) Philadelphia Holy Spirit Church (1900 to now) mission faith power love holiness Laodicia End-time Church (1900 to now) money, politics, power, celebrity, image
The church in Ephesus was praised and warned Revelation 2:1 I know your works, your labor, your patience … and you have persevered and have patience, and have laboured and not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
The next church, Smyrna did become weary through persecution. John wrote vs.8 the devil will throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Exhaustion of persecution in Smyrna inevitably led to the church in Pergamos (marriage) to accept the protection of the Roman Empie through Constantine and to accept the compromise of the marriage of state and church. This led to the superstitious pagan church of Thyatira being rebuked for allowing the immoral and idolatrous influence of Jezebel. Then followed the church of Sardis which represents the historic stage of reformation of faith under Luther which decayed into dead denominationalism. John wrote “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die,

Then came the churches of Philadelphia and Laodicea. These churches both represent the experience of Holy Spirit revival life coming to the church worldwide. Philadelphia type churches and Laodicea type churches both emerged in the 1900 Pentecost Holy Spirit revival, and many people of the many thousands of dying denominations were touched by it. Jesus said at Pentecost ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will become witnesses of me’.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God’ s love and holiness and power and truth and of Gospel mission and witness. Some church movements from the 1900 revival became holiness churches and others became Holy Spirit power churches. Others became doctrinal truth teaching churches and others missionary movements. And there always was and still is the possible drift from Philadelphia love and faith and holiness to Laodicea worldly power and image and complacency. But church history is not destined for abandonment, xand neither is the human soul. We can awaken and recognise any hypocrisy and that awakening sparks the Philadelphia stage of transformation.

The Philadelphia type churches receive encouragement, and though weak in worldly strength, if they remained faithful to Christ, they are promised an open door that no one can shut.
The Laodicea type churches get rebuked for lukewarm self-sufficiency (the word Laodicea means ‘the opinions of the people). Though they were materially prosperous, Jesus called them spiritually poor and blind. Yet even here Jesus extends a gracious invitation to renewed fellowship: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Note –

Philadelphia is the church of brotherly love - the name comes from phileo meaning affection or love – and delfos - brother, so it means brotherly love and this represents a historical movement experiencing genuine spiritual life of an open door of spiritual power - an open door that no human institution can shut. Laodicea has a closed door locked on the inside that Jesus stands at and knocks to be let in
But that brotherly love to one another and to God and the spirituality of grace and Holy Spirit freedom and renewal will operate differently to a religiously structured church like the church of Laodicea - the lukewarm church. And if the spirit of a Philadelphia church does not become compromised, they keep an open door that no one can shut and they receive no rebuke from Jesus.
That brings us back to all of us holding a dynamic history textbook, a ticking prophetic clock and a mirror of our transforming soul all at once.

And the number of seven churches isn’t an accident. It represents end time completion.
These letters represent an exhaustive range of spiritual conditions found in humanity. everyone has a bit of all seven churches within them - we have a bit of Ephesus a bit of Sardis a bit of Laodicea somewhere within our own soul - this aligns with the apostle Paul's teaching in 1Corinthians 2:11 says that only our spirit can discern what we have in our soul, and he later says examine yourselves whether you are in the faith 2Corinthians 13:5

These seven conditions of the soul are deeply connected to those seven areas of historic church experience and spirituality, and they don't just exist in a vacuum. One spiritual state of a church directly triggered the vulnerabilities of the next stage in a remarkable progression and it does so also in our souls.

Philadelphia can reflect or mirror a person’s soul or it can reflect an historical movement or a current day church that experiences the genuine spiritual life of an open door of God’s life and love and power - an open door that no human institution can shut.
Laodicea can reflect the soul of worldly religious mindsets and structures of opiniated complacency and self-sufficiency.

The Church of Philadelphia can stay pure by the grace of God at a grassroots level of relational integrity while the Laodicean church may resist that simplicity and freedom. The wealth and image of the Laodicean church that thinks they're rich and need nothing receives a divine diagnosis that is devastating. Jesus says ‘you are wretched and poor and blind and naked - that's a harsh reality check.

So a question arises for me right here. If one stage naturally triggers the next - as we saw in the exhaustion of persecution in Smyrna leading to seeking relief in the worldly power in Pergamos which led to the superstitious pagan church of Thyatira. Then followed the faith reformation, then the dead religion of Sardis. Then the divergence of Philadelphia and inevitably the worldly power of the opiniated Laodicea.
Laodicea looms as an historical dead-end doom loop. And is the human soul also doomed to a dead-end doom loop? Where do we get off?

The answer is we get to choose where we stay on the map and it is unequivocally clear the antidote to the doom loop is to deliberately anchor ourself in the Philadelphia state of life because the text of the Scripture is entirely intentional here. The logos design in this text wants us to feel for our own souls the weight of that possible downward spiritual spiral we saw in the letters to the churches because we are accountable for the state of our own souls. Only the Philadelphia life brings faith and hope and love and freedom. A person can be living a Philadelphia type life in any kind of church if they know how and the Bible tells us how. and you stay free! And the Bible tells us how.
There are people attending a Laodicea type church that are living in a Philadelphia type church life in their soul and there are people going to a Philadelphia type church and living a Laodicea soul life. Only God knows the hearts, and we cannot judge peoples’ hearts – we can simply observe church structure and test the spirit of the church.

2Timothy 2:24 pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

The entire purpose of Revelation unveiling these stages is to expose the recurring cycles whether you are analysing 2000 years of human history or just the last 10 years of your own personal spiritual development. Seeing the pattern and living the spiritual process of the salvation of the soul that marks the church of Philadelphia is the Scriptural way to break the cycle of perishing and completing the cycle of being saved and healed and how to break every chain of bondage.

We're living in days when because of the cultural immorality and chaos and confusion and betrayal that's going on in the world people can feel they’re in bondage to certain kinds of ideologies or feel if they don't believe what the group has as a certain kind of new age or some kind of way of thinking - if they don't join with them politically in their opinions they'll be left out. So they've become joined to it and that can become a bondage to something that's got nothing to do with what God saying to the world. But we focus on what God's doing and what he’s saying. The end part of that little prayer of presence I presented last week is, Lord I thank you that you own this moment and that in this moment you are restoring and reordering all things out there in the world. I might be thinking in my mind anxiously about the chaos that's happening out there but my prayer is Lord this moment that you own is bringing your never-ending activity of reordering into all of that chaos and that brings me great comfort. The last line is, thank you Lord for including me in your reordering in the spirit - no matter what's going on and what other people are doing and no matter what kind of challenge that's making me feel my own emotional reactions and confusion I know that God is at work saying stay at peace, I am reordering everything. Watch and you will see the result of how I am bringing things to the surface and working these things all together for good to you because you're wanting my will in your life.

It does come down to a very simple formula of rather than being self-conscious about what's going wrong, being God conscious of what he is now making right. That is his agenda no matter what is happening on the outside or whatever is being shouted from the rooftops and from pulpits, God is speaking to you on the inside and promising you he is reordering your life to be walking with him in his perfect will.
And we will go through trials - the fire will burn - no pain no gain. The Clippers will be out to chop off the dead branches and they'll get thrown into the fire, and the fire can burn - that's not hell you going to - that's the here and now burning off of the dead wood - the loss of what is not of God. But as that outward part starts to get burned off and perish the inward is being renewed day by day. Amen.
Pul OSullivan – pauloss@me.com

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REVELATION Ep1 Full Disclosure

Just as Genesis is the book of beginnings, Revelation is the book of consummation. In it, the divine program of redemption is brought to fruition, and the holy name of God is vindicated before all creation. Although there are numerous prophecies in the Gospels and Epistles, Revelation is the only New Testament book that focuses primarily on prophetic events. Its title The Apocalypse means “unveiling” or “disclosure” or “revelation.” It is also called The Revelation of Jesus Christ. This means both a revelation which came from Christ and a revelation which is about Christ—both are true.

Revelation 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John,
2. who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.
3. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.
4. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, (theme of past present and future) and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,
5. and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
6. and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
7. Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.
8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (NB theme of past present and future)
9. I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,
11. saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”(turkey not Jerusalem)
12. Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands,
13. and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.
14. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire;
15. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;
16. He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
17. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.
18. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
19. Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.
20. The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

The Book of Revelation is the unveiling of who and what Jesus is to the church to the world and to eternity. Scholars have viewed these prophecies through four primary lenses. While each perspective seeks to honour the work of the Holy Spirit, I hold the Futurist view in this study because it mentions things that have happened in history, inspires faith in the "here and now" of Christ’s absolute authority over and through His Church and it looks forward to the future Second Coming with a living hope.

1. Preterist - depicting the current Roman struggle against the church and not future prophesy throughout the ages of the second coming of Christ. They say he came in 70 AD when Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. But we see in Revelation 1:7 that John was prophesying the Day of The Lord - the Second Coming and judgement.

2. Historical - The struggle of the church against the world system through the ages.

3. Spiritual - depicting nothing literal or historical at all, but purely symbolical.

4. Futurist - depicting events that would surely take place in the church, the world and eternity, after the time of John, and beginning significantly with the opening of the first of the seven seals in chapters 5 and 6 (also see Ch.4 vs 1 – things to come)
   Revelation 4:1… And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”

This leads us to take note of the three divisions of time.
Revelation 1.19 write the things that you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.
1. Things you have seen - chapter 1
2. Things which are - chapters 2 to 4 – the 7 churches.
3. Things with shall be - chapter 4 onwards.

There are three persons involved in this revelation – Jesus – John – The messenger.
I submit to you that the messenger, or angel that gave this prophecy to John is Enoch, and we will now look at some evidence.

1. Records in Genesis 5 and Hebrews 11 confirm that Enoch is physically in Heaven with God. This creates a theological necessity – Enoch has been given a Divine exemption and is released from the prison of his appointment with death.
   Hebrews 9:27 it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.
   But he is not the only one! There will be a generation of people who will be caught up from the earth to meet Jesus in the air when he returns.
   Psalm 102:18 This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD…From heaven the LORD viewed the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, To release those appointed to death,

2. The Bible link for Enoch
   Revelation 1:7 Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him - and Jude 14
   Jude 14. Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all.
   This prophecy of the Second Coming is virtually identical to Revelation 1:7

3. When linked with the messenger’s self-identification in Revelation 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
   And ch.22:9 Then he said to me, “See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets,
   The evidence presents this historical figure as being uniquely commissioned to return and declare the unveiling to John.

The Book of Revelation was written about 95-AD by the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos while he was in exile under the persecution of Domitian. The apostle Peter and Paul had been martyred just previously under the persecution of emperor Nero. This dating mainly comes from early church testimony, especially Irenaeus in the second century, who said the vision was seen “toward the end of Domitian’s reign.” Irenaeus lived from 120 to 202 AD, and the future hope of the return of Christ became the dominant position in both Eastern and Western Christianity and still is. Added to this is the fact that the seven churches in Asia Minor that John writes to would logically have been more developed and established at that time.

The book of sevens
Revelation 1:4 - John to the seven churches which are in Asia. Grace be to you, and peace, from him which is, which was, and which is to come - and from the seven spirits which are before his throne. (see also vs.20)

Here there are mentioned seven spirits and seven churches, and of great significance later in the book are
1. The 7 seals
2. The 7 trumpets from seven agels
3. The 7 vials

1. The seven seals - the seven seals are seals of a book of events which are to happen worldwide (ch5.1) Which include the revelation of a conquering church, judgments upon the earth, and signs and wonders in the heavens. These events take place progressively and will be studied in detail later. The 7th seal actually contains another series of events called the seven trumpets.
2. The seven trumpets- The seven trumpets blown by seven angels are also a series of worldwide events that are judgments upon the earth, they are not final judgments but are meant to turn people to God. And the 7th trumpet contains in its blast, the seven vials.

NB The 5th angel releases locust/scorpion spirits which torment people for five months but those sealed with the Holy Spirit are protected – just as Noah and family were protected for 5 months in the ark.

I met up with some close Christian friends from Inverell at a function this week and I shared that I’d be teaching the Book of revelation this coming Sunday, and they mentioned the passages about the scary demonic locusts that had a sting like scorpions (ch.9). They said that some people thought they were symbolic of fighter planes etc. But we agreed that they were definitely of a spiritual nature, set free by an angel for five months and not allowed to kill those with the seal of God – the Holy Spirit. And the next day, Thursday there was a report from the Whitehouse that the Senate had been asked to disclose information about aliens and UFO’s… Three years ago the USA Senate were asked to disclose that information about aliens and UFO’s, and the topic was quashed, because the number of reports and polarising opinions was causing too much chaos. The same thing happened in the early 70’s in the midst of a move of the Holy Spirit. At that time there were reports from aeronautical scientists and the AirForce and the Military about Roswell and objects seen to be moving at incredible speed. Odd but human-like little aliens were reported to have even been captured or preserved or whatever. That report was shut down many months later under suspicious circumstances.
So now the senate is about to do the disclosure of all the evidence of the various reports from over the years. And conveniently on Thursday there appeared ads of a new release of a movie called ‘Disclosure Day’ directed by Stephen Spielberg about aliens and UFO’s and cosmic chaos in the Heavens.
I don’t know why the Government and the media and Hollywood or whoever else are hitting the global airwaves with this and trying to control some sort of cultural narrative but it will have a scary chaotic spiritual influence on our current society. It will be deceptive bur will contain enough true documentation to get people all over it with the usual opinions and political and tribal disputes
If I am going to be asked questions I’d like to be as prepared as I can be because there will be distortions and confusion abounding.
Luke 21:11 Then He said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights (phobitron- frightening things that strike terror) and great signs from heaven.

1. The seven vials - the seven vials are seven final judgments which come up on the earth during the time of the great tribulation.

The key verse- Revelation 1:7 - behold he comes with clouds. And every eye shall see him, and they also who pierced him. And all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen
This is ‘The Day of The Lord’ – which incorporates
1. The Resurrection of the dead (including they who pierced him, the Romans, the Jews, our sins),
2. The inauguration of Judgement,
3. The unveiling of Christ,
4. Books being opened and
5. Creation being brought into its final state before God (Romans 8:21)
All this will occur in stages as we see in the Book of Revelation, in a way beyond our imagination or earthly view, as if of some court case in a grand mammoth court.

This book is an unveiling of the character and program of God and that is what we shall be seeking to understand through the Holy Spirit in our study of Revelation

Paul OSullivan pauloss @me.com

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UNIVERSAL PENTECOST

Passover was first celebrated when Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt when they were told to sacrifice a spotless lamb and sprinkle its blood on their doorposts. They were told to not to do the long baking process of leavening the bread - because of the haste with which they had to flee Egypt. And from that time on Israel celebrated the Passover Feast each year with unleavened bread. Leaven is basically yeast and other ingredients can be added.
The Feast of Passover weekend where Jesus as the Lamb of God died on the cross included Resurrection Sunday where Jesus rose from the dead and offered his blood of sacrifice to the Father. And on that day was also the Jewish Feast of Sheaves which was symbolic of Jesus being the firstfruits of the Resurrection. And Fifty days after that came the Feast of Pentecost (pente = fifty) – a harvest feast for life instead of a blood sacrifice feast for sin.

The Passover and all other sin offerings were required to use unleavened bread because leaven had become the symbol for sin. Paul even admonished the church in Corinth because of their unruly communion services, saying they were celebrating their communion with the old leaven of malice and evil. Their lives should have been an expression of a new leaven of love and life and faith and we’ll see how this came to be our new spiritual reality today.

The appearance of leaven occurred when Israel began to celebrate the Pentecost harvest feast with two loaves of leavened bread. The law commanded them to only use leavened bread in this feast instead of unleavened bread. (Leviticus 23:15).
This could appear to be a scandalous thing, as only unleavened bread was ritually used with sacrifices, but this leavened bread was prophesying a most significant and radical shift for the nature and being of humanity. That shift occurred on the Sunday of the Pentecost Feast after the death and resurrection of Jesus. His death and resurrection had universally reconciled humanity to Divinity as one in Spirit. And then came this further glorious shift of all flesh becoming indwelt by the Person of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore the leaven of the Feast of Pentecost had been necessarily baked in for humanity to receive Holy Spirit life in Christ. The blood imagery of Passover was replaced by the new leavened bread imagery of Pentecost.
Blood shed by Jesus speaks to us of his life given - Bread speaks of a life shared.
We move past an initial act of rescue to a continual act of communion with God.

The new leaven symbolises the Holy Spirit being sent to us and for us.This radically changes our lives from having to be empowered by an Adamic sinful nature into now being sustained and empowered by the indwelling Christ through the Holy Spirit. The righteousness and true holiness of God is the basis of our life now and not the bondage to sinful flesh.
This is the amazing reality of the new Creation humanity – the truth that God does not wait for humanity to be perfected before he accepts them as his family. Universal Reconciliation has done away with need for unleavened bread and blood sacrifice for sin. Separation has ceased because sin no longer is the separation between us and God. He accepts humanity as leavened by grace and being transformed by the Holy Spirit within his love that works by faith. Resistance to believing this is the only problem, and the Holy Spirit has been sent to convict the world of that sin of unbelief (John 16:7).

But why only two loaves at Pentecost – wouldn’t the truth of the Trinity assume three loaves for Pentecost? No – because The Holy Sirit was not yet sent upon all flesh, Old Covenant theology did not teach about the Trinity. And during the Old Testament era only two Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Christ Messiah represented the present and future hope of humanity, and the Holy Spirit's influence was limited to operating only through specific chosen individuals like prophets, kings, and priests and judges like Sampson, Gideon etc. Not mankind

But the reality of the Trinity was presented in the Old Testament by so many types and shadows of a hidden threefold expression of God. There was the sun and moon and stars of the heavenly creation, the threefold architecture of Noah’s Ark as the two lower decks and the upper compartment from where the dove of the holy Spirit flew out after the flood. There was the plan of the tabernacle and the temple with the outer court the inner court and the Most Holy Place (in the shape of the cross incidentally). It was all there but hidden.

The most striking threefold manifestation of the Trinity which included blood sacrifice and unleavened bread occurred when Abraham was met by three angels at an encampment where he was with his wife Sarai and his servants and his cattle. He greeted the three messengers as My Lord and not my lords, so in his addressing the three men as Adonai indicates that he had a revelation (called a theophany) of God as the three persons of the Trinity. He told Sarai to bake three loaves of unleavened bread for the men to eat and ordered his servant to slay a calf of sacrifice. The men then told him that Sarai would have a son and that through him Abraham would become the father of many nations and that all the families of the earth would be blessed. This blood sacrifice and the unleavened loaves pre-empted the first Passover feast in Egypt by 400 years and pre-empted the feast of the universal spiritual Pentecost after Jesus died on calvary by 2000 years.

But the Jewish Feast of Pentecost on that day fifty days after Jesus died and rose again sacrificed the usual two loaves of leavened bread. The astonishing revelation is that
The two loaves become three on the day! The third person of the Trinity was revealed as tongues of fire on that Pentecost! The shift from two to three loaves represents the full unveiling of the Trinity's work in the world and the unprecedented outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all humanity.
The prophetic progression to three loaves was also encrypted in the New Testament by Jesus in Matthew 13 where he teaches that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven hidden in three loaves of bread until the whole lump becomes transformed. The word “hidden” is fascinating. It is always written as krypto but Jesus used the Greek word egkrypto which is used nowhere else in Scripture. Encryption means not only hidden but encoded - the idea of something deeply embedded within and concealed internally until it transforms everything around it.
This numerical shift from two to three prophesied the arrival and indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. This transition illustrates the complete work of the Trinity: The Father is the source of the loving promise of adopting us as his unique and individual children through Jesus. Jesus is the sinless sacrifice and the "first fruits" of the resurrection. The Holy Spirit with tongues of fire represents the purifying and sanctifying fire of the trials of our faith and the empowering of our transformation into the likeness of God. The Holy Spirit concluded the third loaf reality, as His presence was finally poured out upon all flesh.
Ultimately, this third loaf blessing is the establishment of the New Covenant. It marks a profound shift from the Old Testament—where the law was written on tablets of clay to a reality where the Holy Spirit writes the law directly onto human hearts. In fact the day of the Feast of Pentecost for Israel was also the exact same day that they celebrated the anniversary of the Law written on stone tablets with Moses at Sinai.
That is how the Holy Spirit works. The old covenant operated through external rules written on stone but in the New Covenant the Spirit writes the law upon the heart and the Kingdom grows within.

This the grace in the New Covenant heart. In His expanded, New Covenant role, the Holy Spirit operates as an intensely personal guide and advocate. He universally convicts the world of unbelief and righteousness and the judgment of God upon Darkness. The Holy Spirit empowers those who believe and leads us into all truth, and spreads God's love into and through our hearts. He takes the teachings of Jesus and interprets them for us as individuals in highly personal ways, ensuring that people can hear and understand God ‘s voice regardless of their cultural or circumstantial or religious background – they all heard him that day in their own tongue. Ultimately, this continuous filling of the Holy Spirit empowers the Church to expand the Kingdom of God and express the Trinity of God to the world.
The world changes when hearts change and this is why that Universal Pentecost mattered so deeply. Christianity is not institutional look good religion - it is divine life flowing through human vessels. Religion tries to conform people externally while the Spirit transforms people organically from the inside.
Leaven works quietly and slowly and patiently, yet eventually it affects the entire loaf. Sometimes we become discouraged because transformation feels slow, but inner fermentation movement is evidence that life is active. You may not see dramatic change every day but if the Spirit is within you and you say yes to his work, something holy is expanding. God is more patient and thorough with your process than you are.
Paul OSullivan pauloss@me.com

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EDEN TO PARADISE

Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden with a blameless soul that they themselves had generated - before Satan appeared on the scene. Their souls enjoyed perfect relationship with God – knowing nothing but the love of God and being grateful and obedient to him in all things. When they were tempted and fell into disobedience their souls lost that perfect relationship and they were cast out of the garden.
Eden was a beautiful garden and had many trees and they ate the fruit of them, except for two of the trees, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. A river called Pishon flowed out from the garden where there was gold and the Bible says that the gold was good – a lot in that statement!

The Garden of Eden was a picture of Paradise - a Persian word for a walled garden, and it signifies a state of perfect joy and peace, and divine presence. That divine presence and protection of their Paradise was lost for Adam and Eve and for humanity when they sinned against God and ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God then barred Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life to prevent them from eating its fruit and living forever in their fallen, sinful state. God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever (Genesis 3:22). Death entered - awaiting resurrection.

Five other things that were changed or lost by and through Adam and Eve in Eden and restored for us through Jesus in a new true Paradise.

The Garden of Eden and future Paradise.
The two trees – The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life – big changes.
The River flowing from Eden to Paradise in Revelation – big change
The gold of the garden becomes the substance of the Heavenly City in Paradise.
The presence of God and its power in every present moment is now our Paradise.

1 When Paradise was closed off and barred to humanity because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience it was reopened in Christ on the cross, as the Tree of Life.
In Luke 23:43 a robber on a cross next to Jesus had just rebuked his fellow robber for mocking Jesus, saying to him ‘we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong’. He asked for Jesus to remember him in the Kingdom and Jesus said to him ‘Today you will be ‘with Me’ in Paradise’. Access was given to a sinner who was mercifully and lovingly forgiven.

Eden is not just reversed at the Cross - Paradise is now centred in a Person -‘with Me’, Paradise is not simply where we go - it is what happens when nothing obstructs the presence of ‘God with us.’ That is where Paradise started, and that’s how we currently find it, and that’s where it finishes in our final ‘age to age’ existence. Adam in Genesis closed it, Jesus opens it, we live in it now – within us – Book of Revelation completes it.

2 The two trees – The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life.
What we eat becomes physically part of us. What tree we eat from determines what we become in our inner life. The tree of Life is the indwelling life that Jesus won for us on the cross that we can choose by faith to live out of. The Tree of knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve ate separated them relationally from God and from one another. It became all about ‘What is good is only what is good for me’ - ‘I am right and you are wrong’
Instead of the knowledge of good and evil being the answer for humanity it became the problem. When Eve saw that it was ‘desirable to make one wise’ and shared the fruit with Adam, their covetousness for that self-centred meaning of ‘good’ corrupted their wisdom into foolishness. The Bible describes that tree of knowledge kind of wisdom.
if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.( James 3:14+).
James goes on to say that this corrupted wisdom causes us to live in conflict with others and in conflict within ourselves. We know we are eating from the wrong tree when we get emotionally involved in proving we are right and get irritable if someone won’t see things our way. The Tree off Life prompts us to wait and listen for God to speak into the situation.
The Tree of Life stood at the centre of the garden, and it represents ongoing participation in God’s life - Not mere immortality, but dependent, relational life. Access was open until the fall. After the fall Humanity was barred from the Tree (Gen 3:22–24) and Cherubim guarded the way. The key meaning of the Tree of Life is sustained communion with God as the source of life so the crisis of our lives is not just death—it is the loss of access to divine life.
The Tree Reappears as the Cross - Jesus “bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24)
This is not accidental language. What was once guarded in Eden becomes given at the cross and the reversal is life changing. We can put to death the tree of knowledge in us and be risen up to life in the Tree of Life. It is a commitment of faith that works by love.

3 The River that flowed out from Eden flows through to Paradise in Revelation.
This is now the River of Life within for the Tree of Life being Lived in Jesus.
River once flowed from Garden – life flows from Jesus through Holy Spirit.
Paul tells us that our life is now “in Christ” – we become participants in the flow
Ezekiel 47:1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was flowing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east…7 I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, 9. “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down and enters the sea; And everything will live wherever the river goes.

Revelation 22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb - through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (ongoing).

4 The gold found in the garden - everything in the Heavenly City in Paradise is of gold. Gold speaks of value. It speaks of material value and also of spiritual value. The world stores up gold for economic power and influence and in this its value gets corrupted.
The value of Spiritual Gold is that it speaks of the nature of God that dwells within us through Jesus. Peter wrote that the gold is tested through fiery trials of faith to be refined (1Peter 1:7) Job said, when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. (Job 23:10).

The ark of the tabernacle had gold on the inside and was covered by acacia wood on the outside – Humanity overlaying divinity. The interior of Solomon’s Temple was overlaid with gold, the final dwelling place of God in the Old Testament. Jesus said he was that temple. And Paul says we are now that temple on earth.
1Corinthians 3:11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Gold is always being revealed through what is being destroyed (the not us).

The silver redemption shekel buys the gold of God’s nature.
Every man shall give a ransom for his soul…” Exodus 30:12
The silver is explicitly called atonement money, ransom money, Redemption is silver.
Joseph and Jesus were both betrayed by silver. Both gold and silver can be corrupted.
They appear in Revelation regarding Babylon’s corrupted wealth – The gold is greed and silver is betrayal. Then silver disappears from Paradise in Revelation as final redemption has reached its goal and the Heavenly City is pure gold
Revelation 21:18 The city was pure gold… And the street of the city was pure gold,

5 The presence of God - and the power of this present moment that Jesus owns.
2 Corinthians 5:13 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?
Reconciliation awaits our believing and receiving by faith to experience our new reality of being as a ‘New Creation’ (2Corinthians 5:14-21). God awaits the awakening of the world that he has reconciled. His longsuffering (macrothumia – extended heartfelt waiting without retaliation) is our age-to-age salvation (2Peter3:15)

Faith comes into focus when we become conscious of what God is doing rather than what we are doing – God consciousness instead of self-consciousness.
God desires drawing near to us more than we do to him, and he does this to achieve non-separation between himself and us – Divinity and humanity reconciled into one New Creation - God with us. Pray this reality into your spirit.

Thank you Lord for your loving presence – and for your powerful work you are doing on my behalf in the world of the unseen.
Thank you for your mercy on my shortcomings and your forgiveness that has gone before in all things.
Thank you for this moment that you own in which you are reordering all things.
Thank you for including me in this moment of your Kingdom being reordered in my life.

That kind of faith leaves you living with a new hope

Paul OSullivan pauloss@me.com

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UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION
I asked last week what went wrong with the gospel, quoting Paul who wrote concerning a wrong gospel saying there are some who trouble you (tarasso - to strike one's spirit with fear and dread - Galatians 1:7). He says they want to reverse (metastepho) the gospel. Since the time of Christ, a World population of almost 70 billion people has existed, and how many people have heard the true gospel? I believe certain English words have been prejudicially translated from the original language that have altered the nature of the gospel and reversed our perception of a loving saving God. And we will look at some of those words today. And how has that affected our current global Western culture relationally and morally 2Peter 3:9 The Lord…is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (metanoia – a change of mindset). I am proposing that the trajectory of Scripture presents God’s judgment as ultimately restorative rather than purely retributive, and that words and concepts traditionally interpreted as eternal punishment may instead work through age-to-age judgment, truth, and revelation until human creation is brought into alignment with God. I am arguing that God’s redemptive power and purpose is not ultimately defeated by human resistance.
Philippians 3:21 He will transform our lowly body (tapein??sis – lowly estate) that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

I would like to personally query three aspects of the nature of the gospel today. This will take more than one session.
Is God’s nature one of loving restoration or retributive punishment?
What is hell and judgement and the consequence of sin?
What is eternity?

I perceive God as a divine architect who has designed a relational home where he might enjoy loving relationship with his human family, for them to find utter fulfillment in his company. The home was built on a foundation of love and peace and order. Then the foundation became destructively cracked and flawed by the pride and disorder of Satan. Immediately following that the damaged foundation was built upon with inadequate flawed human material and it has crumpled and subsided time after time. Then a new divine/human foundation was laid which was Christ and a new creation was invited to build upon this new foundation of love and peace and order. The home was made to be filled and not emptied, so the flawed foundation had to be fully restored, and the flawed human material had to be fully redeemed so that it could be filled.
In Matthew 22 a King prepared a feast for his son, and most of the invited guests were too busy or distracted to turn up, but he wanted his house filled with guests for his son so sent his servants out and they ended up having to invite people from the highways and byways, both bad and good. And the house was filled. God wants a full house. The highways and byways people can be seen as ‘fringe people’ The edge or fringe becomes the meeting place of exclusion and inclusion in Scripture, and examples include Ruth as an outsider being included in Israel through marrying Boaz, and the gentile woman who touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment and was healed. It is also typified in the priestly garments and the boundary materials of the tabernacle. And even one of the wedding guest fringe people resisted and was cast into outer darkness for not wearing a wedding garment and I’ll cover that redemption theme at another time. I believe the plan for God’s house being filled was designed before time began, and what follows in real time is restoration and the events of purifying and restoration in the history of human life.
2a. The nature of sin and its consequences – The common established belief is that
Sin separates us from God and that sin can finally result in going to hell. The following Scripture is commonly taken to mean that if you believe in Jesus, you will not perish (go to hell) but you will receive eternal life (go to Heaven).
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

2b. The names implying what hell is are Hades, Gehenna, Lake of fire, Tartarus, Sheol and even Outer darkness. Hades (O.T. Sheol), does not really describe the place of eternal torment. It described the realm that is not visible to the living (ha – not and ideis – seen) the unseen, the hidden, what lies beyond the horizon of the living. It occurs in the Epistles once in Revelation, where it is done away with to no longer exist.

Jesus spoke of Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom in Jerusalem where the fire of spontaneous combustion destroys the rubbish which symbolizes the judgment and destruction of sinful corruption (also James 3 re the tongue and corrupt speech). I’ve seen Smokey Mountain on a missionary trip to the Philippines with 2 young people. Thousands lived ther and made a living there scavenging what was not consumed by the fire. The epistles interpret the concept of fire as a process of transformation where God’s fire removes what is of the flesh so that life in Christ remains. I’m proposing that the nature of fire called hell is purifying and corrective discipline rather than retributive punishment.
We will get to the others later…Lake of fire …Tartarus…Outer darkness…

I have already compared Jonathan Edward’s sermon of ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God with the writings of Athanasius in 350 AD. Edwards said ‘Why should God love you because you have never loved him’. The apostle John answers that - ‘We love him because he first loved us’ (1John 4.18).
Athanasius wrote that Jesus died out of sheer love for us so that… he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption and make them alive through death… and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

The refining fire of God’s love is the divine method for transformation because it looks forward to what is possible and applies the purifying trials of faith to get there.
Punishment and retribution look backward at what was done and demand payment to what seems to be to no good end.
The fire of judgment in this truth is not the satisfaction of divine wrath; it is the
completion of divine purpose - and redemption is the restoration of what was always meant to be.
God’s divine wrath is the intense indignation at what sin has done to cripple the souls of his children and it is aimed at the source of evil itself and not the victims of it. That indignation shakes whatever can be shaken to rid it from his children so that what remains cannot be shaken – the Kingdom life within. And whatever evil or darkness we harbour in our own lives will get shaken from our ignorant or resistant grasp for our own sake and those around us.
Hebrews 12:1… let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith… do not despise the chastening of the LORD…He does that for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful;

Paul says that as a wise master builder (architekt??n) he has laid the foundation.
1Cor 3:11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
This purifying fiery judgement and Hades, and Gehenna all overlap but some are used more as warnings than encouragement.

1 Corinthians 3:13–15 distinguishes between the work and the worker. The work may be tested and found wanting, may be burned away as wood, hay, or straw. But "he himself will be saved, though as through fire." The person passes through and the fire does not consume them - it consumes what was not them.
With Peter the illustration is that as that seed grows through faith, the outer husk of the seed, our outer soul-self life, is burned away by the fiery trials of faith.
1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you;

1Timothy 5:24 some mens’ sins go on beforehand to judgement and some they follow after.
This means we can have the wood and straw burned off in this life or in the next age.

The Greek word translated judgment – krisis, throughout the New Testament primarily means decision and judgment. The word carries the act of separating, sifting, distinguishing. A crisis is the decisive moment, the point at which the true nature of something becomes apparent and that can clearly involve adverse outcomes.
The Bible uses the following words;
krisis judgment, decision, evaluation and accountability.
kolasis Matthew 25:46 - corrective pruning (like trimming a tree)
paideia Hebrews 12 - discipline, training of a child
dike – Justice and being weighed in the balance.
Judgment is not retaliatory destruction, but a process that exposes, purifies, and restores. Even the judgment in the apocalyptic vision of Revelation which we will look at in later sessions is about sifting, not retribution, so the pattern holds even at the level of judgment itself.

But is the redemption payment enough for all mankind? Did the work of Jesus do enough to satisfy his Father that he paid for the lives of all of God’s created children?
Supposing a child was kidnaped and the parent had to pay a $100,000 ransom. Does a parent say ‘look I can manage $50,000 but 100 is too much – and then walk away?

In the Jewish Seder ceremony of Passover, the father takes three matzahs or flat pieces of bread and breaks the middle one in half. He hides half of the middle matzah, called the afikomen, somewhere in the house and the children go through the house searching for the hidden half. When it is found and returned the father gives the winning child a ‘ransom’ – possibly a radical prophetic picture blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (Romans 11:25) Jesus being half taken out of sight for Israel but fully seen by those who have eyes of faith to see him. The broken middle matzah can be seen as a picture of hiddenness, brokenness, and the later revealing and restoration of Christ as our redeemer. What is broken and hidden is not lost—but sought, redeemed, revealed, and finally received as indwelling life.

1. The nature of eternity and age to age.
   The Scriptures use the word eternity, but biblical eternity also means age-to-age unfolding with purposeful beginnings and meaningful completions of participation in the life of God and ongoing revelation. The Wycliffe Bible (1382) translated from the Latin Vulgate inherited the Latin aeternus, not the Greek ai?n and age to age ai?nios. The King James Version (1611) Standardised “eternal and everlasting” and cemented this meaning in English-speaking Christianity. Old Testament eternity = olam = Horizon.
   The theological impact was that Judgment or age-to age correction and purification was replaced by eternal punishment. And the meaning of living in the life of the age to come vaguely became eternal life in heaven instead of God’s purposes across the ages.

Jesus reveals the Jubilee Year as a striking model for full redemption.
Luke 4:17 Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1). And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."
Then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He said to them Today you have heard this Scripture fulfilled." You will notice that after Jesus proclaimed the The Jubilee Year - he closed the Book, and there was a special reason for that. The next sentence in Isaiah 61 that he would have read said ‘and to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God’. But that was not what Jesus came to do. ‘For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)
The Jubilee year spoke of the greatest fulfillment of what might have been. This was the year of being given God’s rest and blessing and provision for their lives both individually and as a people of God. It was the year when all work of any kind had to cease, debts were forgiven, Leviticus 25 says and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family and the slaves were given their freedom, and the families were to celebrate the blessings of being God’s children. He also included Gentiles like the widow of Zarephath, Naaman the Syrian, but they could not absorb the implication of his supernatural promise to fulfill the Jubilee for all time for all the world.

For them this was the sacred architecture of the meaning of full restorative redemption.
It was the too good to be true promise of a too loving to be true God. That was Jesus.
That was a little over 2000 years ago – 40 jubilees since Jesus (40x50 = 2000). The number 40 speaks of the time of trials for Israel in the wilderness, and the forty days of temptation in the wilderness for Jesus, and his forty days of resurrected life on earth before his ascension. His vision was corporate, complete, and eschatological with redeemed humans having universal restoration held out to them by the Prince of Peace. But this annoyed them, so they tried to throw him off a cliff. Good news sometimes gets resisted. Amen.

Paul OSullivan pauloss@me.com

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UNIVERSAL GOSPEL What went wrong?

Paul was entrusted with the Gospel of the Word of Reconciliation. And he entrusted that to Timothy and it has been entrusted to us.
2Timothy 2:2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

The Gospel Word of Reconciliation.
2Corinthians 5:18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, and entrusting to us the message (logos) of reconciliation (katalasso).

Logos – (Strong’s Concordance)the Divine Expression (Christ) — account, cause, communication concerning doctrine.
This is the ‘logos’ message, the Good news that God entrusted to Paul. Reconciliation is
Katalasso - kata thoroughgoing intensity, alasso means to alter or change and in God’s work of reconciliation he brought Divinity into humanity in a thorough mutual exchange. This was done through the incarnation of Jesus who became eternally changed from pure spirit being into the divine plus human spirit being of Jesus as a new creation, and we become this New Creation in Christ (Isaiah 7:14 – Virgin has a Son, Emmanuel ‘God with us’).

Peter also received the revelation of being made one in the spirit with Jesus and he preached the same message about the logos word of God as the seed that brings forth the life of the New Creation. He uses a simpler more organic language to convey it.
2Peter 1:4 we have been given exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature.
1 Peter 1:23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God (logos) which lives and abides forever. All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever +++. And this word (logos) is the good news that was preached to you.

With Peter the illustration is that as that seed grows through faith, the outer husk of the seed, our outer soul-self life, is burned away by the fiery trials of faith.
1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; 19 Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good.
This redemptive transformational suffering result in the forever saving of our souls.
1Peter 1:9 Receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation/healing of the soul.

Peter and Paul both had the same gospel, which was that Jesus the new seed of Heavenly life is sown into humanity (Incarnation) so that Divine life and human life become one new life. That describes the initial saving of the human spirit. Then occurs the ongoing salvation of our soul through faith and the purifying of our soul by the fiery trials of faith. John and James also preached this same universal work of the human spirit being eternally joined to God through the incarnation of Jesus.
John 1:10 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
Vs.16 And of His fullness we have all received,

James 1:21 receive with meekness the implanted word (logos), which is able to save your souls.
There are people who are getting this revelation of the exchanged life of ‘God with us’ day after day because of the work of the Holy Spirit revealing the truth taught in the Bible. They can have this truth without knowing exactly what Paul wrote concerning Reconciliation or what Peter wrote about the logos seed of life, or what John or James wrote, but their hearts have received grace and been purified by faith - that is God’s work of grace. I am not insisting upon a dogmatic compliance to what I have found in these Scriptures - but having understood it by the grace of God I am compelled to not withhold anything that may be profitable to you for the sake of the Gospel.

Galatians 1:11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone;

The Gospel comes by revelation from the Holy Spirit in a myriad of ways.

Peter comments on Paul’s message of Reconciliation – and politely says that it can be difficult to understand, but that it is inspired and should not be diminished or twisted.

2Peter 3:15 consider that the longsuffering (withholding of condemnation to achieve transformation) of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

Paul and Peter and James and John jealously guarded the integrity of this amazing salvation of the human spirit by the grace of God and the ongoing transformation and salvation of the human soul.

Paul warns the legalistic Galatians about this.
Galatians 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you (tarasso - to strike one's spirit with fear and dread)
and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven or anyone else should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema)

Being ‘accursed’ or being ‘anathama’ in the Greek is ana- handing up and tithemi – the gift. It is handing something up to God as a sacrificial gift to be purified from corruption.
The handing over leaves that person ‘cut off’ in isolation but the purpose is that the corruption will be destroyed so their spirit and soul can be purified. This is a redemptive act to transform and resttore someone from corruption.
Paul makes this clear later when he says that Jesus has become the anathema curse for us. That is because Jesus took his incorruption up to the altar of the cross as a sacrifice to redeem humanity’s corruption.
Galatians 3:13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the all people in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

In 1 Corinthians 5:5 Paul even handed a man over to Satan for the ‘destruction of the flesh’ - his embodiment of a serious sin - that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. It was the sin of committing adultery with his father’s wife. The man was cut off from the church community and afterwards turned from his sin and was forgiven and restored. That was not done out of a desire to punish but out of a redemptive desire to see forgiveness and transformation and restoration, which is what happened.

Paul took the integrity of the true Gospel message very seriously. He sought to embody the Gospel in his soul as being one of love and care, and not one of motivating people by fear or from a place of assuming power over other people’s lives.
1Thessalonians 2:4-10 But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak... But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own souls (psyche), because you had become dear to us.

The Gospel message became diminished and narrowed over time, starting when Rome lorded Christianity over people turning it into Christendom, but then Martin Luther received the revelation of justification by faith in the reformation in the 1500s till denominational conflict and legalism crept back over the years. there are some who trouble you (tarasso - to strike one's spirit with fear and dread)
Jonathan Edwards was a profoundly spiritual man of puritan and reformed theology who preached powerfully and sincerely in the eighteenth century about the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin, and many thousands responded to his message. But his influence of puritanism and Calvinism shaped the character of American Protestantism for many years, and it still distorts much modern evangelicalism, a gospel of retribution rather that transformation and restoration. The following is an excerpt of Jonathan Edward’s preaching from ‘Sinners in the hands of an Angry God’.

‘The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow for one moment from being made drunk with your blood.’
And why should God be obliged to express such wonderful love to you, who never exercised the least degree of love to him in all your life? You never have loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligation to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper?
(1John 4:18 perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment–kolasis punishment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us). And why then should God be looked upon as obliged to take so much care for your happiness, as to do such great things for it, as he does for those that are saved?

there are some who trouble you (tarasso - to strike one's spirit with fear and dread)
This has resulted in a retributive Gospel of shame and guilt and condemnation that emphasises the fear of a likely future of eternal punishment in hell, which Paul never once mentions.
A false gospel doesn’t just harm behaviour—it distorts our perception of God Himself.
The western Church has grown weaker in love and unity and stronger in pseudo spiritual performance and judging others and falling away.

Compare the angry God Gospel with the original early Christian era of Church Fathers like Athanasius who wrote around 350 AD. He was an Egyptian Coptic Christian Theologian and Church Father - the chief defender of the teaching of the Trinity.

‘It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by him should be brought to nothing by the deceit wrought upon man by the devil, and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As then the creatures whom He had created reasonable like the Word were in fact perishing and such noble works were on their way to ruin, what then was God, being good, to do? Was he to let corruption and death have their way with them – and in that case what would be the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than have been created to be neglected and perish. And besides that, such indifference to the ruin of his own work before his own eyes would argue not goodness in God, but limitation, and that far more than if he had never created man at all. It was impossible therefore that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself…’ He writes further,Thus, taking a body like our own because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death for us all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us so that in his death all might die, and the law of death be abolished because having fulfilled in his body that for which he was appointed, death was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did that he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption and make them alive through death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

Straw from fire is those fiery trials of faith that burn off straw and reveal the gold (1Corinthians 3:11++) But over time the gospel shifted from a cosmic announcement of what God has done for the world to a power based institutionalised message which gave a selective, conditional offer of what God might do if people believed that Jesus could forgive them and save them from going to hell if they obeyed what the church told them.

What went wrong? there are some who trouble you (tarasso - to strike one's spirit with fear and dread).Since the time of Christ, a World population of almost 70 billion people has existed. How many people have heard the true gospel? What is true and what is false? Certain English words have been prejudicially translated from the original language that have altered the nature of the gospel and altered our perception of a loving, saving God - Words such as torment, wrath, eternity, hell, and perishing, and many others. How has that affected our current global Western culture relationally and morally? What questions remain? We will consider some possible answers in our next session - the Lord willing. 2Peter 3:9 The Lord…is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (metanoia – a change of mindset).

Paul OSulivan - pauloss@me.com

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UNIVERSAL RECONCILIATION
I’m calling today’s word Universal Reconciliation. This is going to be a doctrinal outline of New Covenant Salvation. I will be discussing the three stages of salvation – salvation of the spirit, salvation of the soul and salvation of the body. And firstly, I want to talk about the foundation, which is about God's initiative through Christ of reconciling the world to himself. God is the initiator and the accomplisher of reconciliation for all humanity through Jesus Christ. This is the salvation of the human spirit.
The scope of Christ’s work in reconciliation powerfully surpasses the scope of Satan’s work in the fall of Adam, and the reach of grace surpasses the reach of sin.
Romans 5 :10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life…
vs 18 therefore as through one man's offence (that was Adam) judgement came to all men resulting in condemnation even so through one man's righteous act (that is Jesus) the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life.
The free gift of reconciliation came to all men through God's grace in Christ for us to share his life with our life.
This results in us being justified – which means being empowered to live in alignment with his heart and mind through faith. Reconciliation is the objective removal of separation between us and God not merely the offer of it. It describes the journey of God's divinity coming into humanity through the Incarnation of Jesus.

2Corinthians 5:18-19 (NKJ) Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (Katallasso), that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world (universal – not just some people) to Himself, not imputing (logizomai – not taking an inventory – not counting) their sins against them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

I would like to look at the Greek word for reconciliation which is KATALASSO which means a thorough mutual changing of two different yet similar things or entities into an entirely new entity. In Strongs concordance it says that KATALASSO is a combination of two words kata and alasso – kata gives the meaning of thorough intensity, alasso means to alter or change and in God’s work of reconciliation he brought two entities into effecting one another into a thorough mutual change – a mutual exchange.

This was done through the incarnation of Jesus. God moved from one age called BC to the next age called AD, becoming eternally changed from pure spirit being into the divine plus human spirit being of Jesus as a new creation. God had prophesied this through Isaiah.
Isaiah 7:14 therefore the lord himself will give you a sign behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us.

Then through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit humanity was eternally changed (Katalasso) from mere human being into God with us spirit being as partakers of the divine nature.
2 Peter 1:4 through which we have been given exceedingly great and precious promises that through these we may be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (epithemia- wrong desires)
This is for all of humanity and is waiting to be catalysed by our faith to come into the new creation of Christ in us. We become the expression of God's love and goodwill in the earth through Jesus.
By saying that Reconciliation was God's initiative it means that God as Jesus Christ joined himself to us as humanity without consulting us or asking for permission. He planned this before the foundation of the world - not imputing trespass means no longer counting sin as separation. It was his unilateral act, regardless of human virtue or merit

That is why reconciliation is classified theologically as an ‘ontological’ Process. That process occurs when one entity causes a new entity to come into being – and the two things have become one new thing - and the second thing cannot not exist without the first but the first now doesn’t exist without the second. For example, the surface skin of an apple is not fully itself without the apple and the fruit of the apple only remains intact when it is within its skin. God did this with himself and humanity in Christ.
People who existed before Christ were obviously dependent upon God because they were created by him, but they were separate from him as lesser human beings not just because of sin but because they did not have the oneness of being with him together - as an apple and the apple skin. The Bible says But your iniquities have separated you from your God. (Isaiah 59:2 also Ephesians 2:1- you who were once dead in trespasses and sins.)
But Reconciliation has done away with both separation and sin.

And now the New Creation being of Christ has become eternal in Heaven and we are one with him forever. The only proper human response to this then must be faith as this has no meaning to a person who does not know it and believe it and live it. A big challenge!
But the startling paradox is that faith does not create reconciliation - faith awakens us to reconciliation as something already done that God in Christ has achieved as the Scriptures above have said. Our obedience of faith to this truth aligns us with the full outworking of reconciliation - For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2Corinthians 5:1). What a mighty outcome! What an important goal!
But - notwithstanding the significance of the outcome and the goal - I want to emphasise how important the process is – We are to live in the process of being reconciled with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit and we leave the outcomes to God. That is living in the reality of what the overall purpose and goal of God for our lives is from day to day.
It is living in the process that brings spiritual growth – not trying to imagine the nature of the goal. That is what God accomplishes in us.
Philippians 2:13 It is God who works in you to will and to do his good purpose.

As I said at the beginning the scope of our salvation as a threefold process of salvation.
1.The salvation of our spirit. 2. Salvation of our soul. 3. Salvation of our body.

1. The salvation of our spirit is God’s work of Reconciliation that has already been accomplished 2000 years ago. We have become joined in spirit to the Lord
   1Corinthians 6:17 he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
   2Corinthians 5:17 The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation
   Doctrinal Statement Faith does not create reconciliation—it awakens us to it and aligns us with it. The full outworking of reconciliation is living in the reality of being a New Creation.

2. The salvation of the soul is about us being saved – the process of being transformed and being brought into alignment in our minds and hearts to God as a New Creation. That is the outworking and the result of reconciliation - the justification of life, which comes through our faith. Our focus is the process and God brings about the outcomes.
   1 Peter 1:9 receiving the goal of your faith the salvation/healing of your souls.
   Romans 5:10 having been reconciled we will be saved by his life. (the saving of the soul)
   1Corinthians 1:18 for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (perishing – the wasting/ruin of a life)
   Doctrinal Statement The soul is being saved through faith – through transformation by participating in the life of Christ, and it is progressive as a growth experience.

3. The third phase or the third process of our threefold salvation is the body the future completion that is the resurrection and glorification of the body.
   Romans 8:23 we also who have the first fruits of the spirit even we ourselves groan within ourselves eagerly awaiting for the adoption the redemption of our body (full purchase)
   1 Corinthians 15:51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (allass??)

I somewhat sadly imagine a conversation in Heaven at Jesus’ Resurrection where the Father congratulates Jesus for his wonderful work of reconciliation for humanity. ‘You’ve achieved the most ultimate work of loving sacrifice for our beloved children my Son. They will be enraptured with joy and gratitude to know this and to believe it and to live it. The epistles will faithfully record it, and the message will be faithfully delivered. One of them will powerfully write in his epistle that we have committed to all who read it the message of reconciliation to be ambassadors for Christ, as though we were even pleading and imploring them on your behalf my Son, to be reconciled to God – to consciously live in the reality of it, not just quote it and hang it on the fridge door. For their sake I made you my Son to be sin who knew no sin so that in you they might become the righteousness of God. They will know that it is no longer just their lives they are living, but that it is your life that is living through them. Epistles will be written about that.
Jesus replies ‘I know it will be written and preached Father and I know that Satan will seek to blind their minds from hearing it. But I will be interceding for them to hear it and live it and speak it. It will finally happen and it will conquer and overcome all evil.’

Summary statement Through the death and resurrection of Christ, God has objectively reconciled the world to Himself, not counting humanity’s sins against them. This spiritual reconciliation, universal in scope and complete in accomplishment, becomes subjectively realized through faith as individuals are progressively transformed in their soul - and ultimately perfected in body at the resurrection, resulting in the full restoration of human beings into union with God. Reconciliation is finished, salvation is unfolding, and complete restoration is the goal.

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On the day of the Resurrection the Bible says. that Jesus rose and left his tomb ‘while it was still dark’ (John 20:1), and women with anointing spices visited the tomb as it began to dawn (Matthew 28:1). As I speak it is now 3.30 am in the Middles East on Sunday where Christians will shortly be celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus. And on this same day many religious Jews will also be celebrating the ‘Feast of Sheaves’, which is the prophetic Jewish feast that remarkably symbolises The Resurrection of Jesus.
There is no one Gospel sequential narrative of how things happened on Resurrection Sunday, but I am joining the dots scripturally using four Gospels and five Epistles plus Old Testament Scriptures to join the Jewish feast of Sheaves to the Christian faith reality of Resurrection on this defining day for both religions.
My question is – What is the prophetic symbolism of Sheaves concerning Jesus as being the First Fruits of the Resurrection?

After Jesus dies on the cross he first descended to the lower parts of the earth, both to hades or the place of the grave and to Paradise (Luke 16:19) where Abraham was, and he also said to the robber on the cross ‘this day you will be with me in paradise.
Ephesians 4:8 “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive… He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
Jesus proclaims the leading captivity captive in the book of Revelation.
Fear not; I am the first and the last: -- I am he that lives and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death. (Revelation1:17,18)

When he descended Jesus set many faithful captives free from their captivity of time, till heaven came to get them,
1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison preaching to them

The Bible mentions a company of people rising from their graves when Jesus rose, and they briefly appeared to people who would recognise them from their earthly life.
Matthew 27:52 And when the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. Many bodies of the saints who had died were raised up and came out of the tombs after his resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

These people represent stalks of the sheaf of what Israel called the ‘Feast of Sheaves’ – the offering of the sheaf of the First Fruits of the promised harvest. After the very brief visit to earth in their new recognizable forms, these upward travellers would regroup with Jesus and resume their journey – from the earth to the sky.

This is a remarkable fulfillment of what happens in Jerusalem on our Resurrection Sunday. Jesus is called the First Fruits of the Resurrection - as the first to rise from the dead into everlasting life. He represents the main stalk of the sheaf, but he took other stalks of grain with him to represent the promise of resurrection life for all of humanity in Christ. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order and Christ the First Fruits (1 Corinthians 15:20),

JESUS AND ISRAEL

THE JEWISH FEAST OF FRUITS
Leviticus 23.9 When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first Fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the LORD.

Those other members of the ‘sheaf offering’ left their graves to visit friends when Jesus had united himself again to the wounded shell of his shrouded body in the tomb and left the headpiece and shroud lying separated from one another (John 20:7).
The women who had prepared oils and spices to anoint the body of Jesus arrived and were astonished to see that the stone had been moved and the guards had fled. They peered inside the tomb and were met by two angels sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

‘Are you looking for Jesus?’ One angel said. ‘He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.’

The women ran to tell the disciples, but Mary Magdalene held back, walking through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. And he called her by her name and said, ‘It’s alright Mary, it is me. ’She ran towards him, but Jesus held up his hand and said, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father. but go to my brethren, and tell them, I am ascending to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things to her. (John 20:17)
Jesus then ascended and offered his blood to the Father in the early hours of that day - to return later in the day in another form (heteros morphe) as stated in Mark 16:12. He then met two disciples travelling to Emmaus.

Towards evening after walking to Emmaus with the two disciples Jesus went to meet with the other disciples who had not gone to Galilee as Jesus had instructed Mary Magdalene to tell them to do. They were instead hiding in fear in Jerusalem. And when Jesus walked through a closed door and greeted them, they thought they had seen a ghost, but Jesus said. I am not a ghost because a ghost does not have flesh and bones - he did not say blood - because he had spilled his blood at Calvary and it had been spiritually presented to the Father in Heaven already, and he had returned to earth still bearing the marks of the wounds to his hands and feet and side from the cross. But what he did say was ‘touch me’. He was now able to say ‘touch me’ - not as when he met Mary and said touch me not, because he had just ascended to the Father, and he had also instructed Mary to tell them that.

Luke 24.37 But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

Jesus was fulfilling the symbolic prophetic Feast of the First Fruits and the waving of the sheaves that we read about earlier.
Leviticus 23.9 And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the LORD.

Jesus had ascended as the Lamb without blemish, untouched by the world (the ‘touch me not’ to Mary), to fulfill the offering of his blood to his Father in Heaven. Jesus had just marked the end of blood sacrifice for sin for all time by sprinkling his blood on the earth at Golgotha for the forgiveness of the sins of the whole world and now the spiritual presentation was made in heaven.
The record of that spotless presentation is beautifully stated in Hebrews.
Hebrews 9:11 But Christ came as High Priest of the better things to come … Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

The Old Testament meaning of ‘life is in the blood’ (Leviticus 17:11) has been radically changed into ‘life is in the Spirit’. Sin once demanded a blood sacrifice of death which had to be repeated daily and that was called the ‘Law of sin and death’. But Paul wrote,
The Law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2)

After Jesus met with his disciples that day, he would spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection and at the end of those forty days he would finally ascend into Heaven, from where he would begin his new mission upon the earth to save the souls of mankind through the Holy Spirit.
We are part of that mission on the earth now of Jesus from Heaven, and I pray Lord that today at this moment in Jerusalem that religious Jews celebrating the Feast of the Sheaves of the First Fruits may get a revelation that the resurrected Jesus, their Messiah, is the fulfillment of their Feast. Give us the grace to be the demonstration of your love and power in the earth today which is crippled by unlove and corrupted power. Amen.

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NOT FORSAKEN

This coming week is a critical week regarding the Middle East conflict between the USA and Iran and Israel. And this week we are entering Holy Week in the approach to Easter for Christians, and Passover for Israel – a defining time for the spiritual reality of Christianity and the religion of Judaism (but not for Islam). For our Christian faith Easter focuses on the death of Jesus at Calvary and his Resurrection and the spiritual fulfillment fifty days afterwards of the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. For Israel Passover is about the supernatural deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and their Covenant of possessing the Promised Land. The future implications of Christianity and Judaism sharing these significant events at this critical time in history will one day become clear and evident, but only one day and no one knows when (The peace talks between USA and Iran have been put off till next week, the day after Passover ?!). There’s a lot to think and to pray about as the sword of the Word that Jesus brings is testing all things. Today we’re looking at the Easter event of the crucifixion of Jesus at Calvary and the nature of human forsakenness.

Forsakenness is the most desolate feeling a person can have, from feeling abandoned, rejected, betrayed, deserted or estranged. It was what Adam and Eve felt when they believed Satan’s lie that separated their minds and hearts from God’s love, plunging humanity into separation and feeling forsaken in our unbelief. The truth is that God had not forsaken them (Hebrews 13:5). But forsakenness was what Jesus felt from many, many people throughout his ministry. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. (Hebrews 12:3)
Jesus was derided by his brothers in his own family (John 7:3-5) and threatened by the people of his own hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4:29), and by the leaders of Israel, and by the Samaritans. He was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, arrested by the Jewish guards, then forsaken and deserted by his own disciples at Gethsemane, then rejected by the people of Israel when they chose Barabbas, then mocked and scourged by Herod’s soldiers, then brutally marched up to Calvary to be crucified by the Romans.

As Jesus hung on the cross that day his innocent being, spirit soul and body, suffered the full impact of Satan’s hostility as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the times to come assailed him. As he was about to die thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. He continued to rally his strength, but a certain missile of horror careened into him with more deadly impact than anything before.
Mark 15:33 Now when the sixth hour had come (noonday), there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour (3pm) Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.

Jesus then began to live out the prophetic fulfilment of the first verse of Psalm 22 written by David (but originally spoken in eternity before the foundation of the world by Jesus the logos). ‘My God My God why have you forsaken me? But as we probe the words in that psalm we see this prophetic statement of Jesus change from hopelessness through hope to grateful victory.
Psalm 22:7 All those who see Me ridicule Me;They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!” Then vs.16 - The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots. he gathers more hope and in vs,21 he says – You have answered Me. I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You. Jesus is actually declaring absolute victory.

Jesus never departed from his Father in spirit, and that loving connection strengthened his blameless soul at all times. And then he says ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit That was for us - that upward path from feeling forsaken in our cross experiences to the healing and salvation of our soul. The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in all points just as we are, so he was tempted to feel forsaken here just like we would be in our humanity. Jesus knew he had not been forsaken by his Father, but in his humanity, he had experienced forsakenness for a moment, so that we in our human weakness need never feel forsaken by God, for he has said I will never leave you or forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)

Jesus faced every temptation and triumphed—not by escaping pain, but by holding fast to the Word of truth. His journey shows us how to move from feelings of forsakenness and abandonment to faith in a loving God in our journey of the healing of our soul. We are not alone. Jesus in his last moments cried out “Father into your hands I now commit my Spirit.” Then in one last gasp he shouted loudly for all about him to hear. “It is finished! “And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

Matthew 27:50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. The Resurrection is next Sunday
At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed (Mark 15 at the ninth hour - 3pm).
And at that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb. Sacrifices were offered on that day from between 2pm and 5pm.
Exodus 12:3 On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household... you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. (so the Lamb was kept for four days before sacrificing it)
When their knives would have pierced the sacrificial animal the true Lamb of God offered himself on Calvary as the final sacrifice for all sin. The temple shook and the great veil in the temple proper which separated the place of God’s presence in the holy place from the rest of the temple was torn from top to bottom.

When that temple veil was torn it signified that Christ as both man and God had done away with the separation of mankind from God in the temple of our bodies. He also put an end to all Covenant Temple sacrifice for religious Israel, and that is very significant for the days in which Israel now live. He had gone ahead for all of us so that we could now have faith to come confidently through the veil of unbelief into the holy place of his abiding presence. We can now find a new hope as the anchor of our souls, and receive the power of his life within us to do what is right and pleasing to God.

The moment Jesus died the cosmic law of sin and death was being overturned to make way for a new cosmic law to come into effect - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That cosmic law did not exist in Eden with Adam and Eve. It would occur only after Jesus rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to give us the risen life of Jesus within, and a new heart like his own. Our hearts can now be fulfilled with a new desire that freely chooses to fulfill the desires of God’s heart – that is how grace works in us. There are many people worldwide feeling forsakenness and confusion in these times and the times to come, and wherever we are we can be used of God to bring grace and truth to comfort those in need. Thank you, Jesus, for overturning the law of sin and death, and for giving to us the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. May we enter through that torn veil and live that life through the power and love of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Paul O’Sullivan – pauloss@me.com

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WARS AND TERRITORY

Throughout history, most wars have been fought over territory—taking it, defending it, or reclaiming it. When territory is won, a flag is planted, signalling a new political or ideological rule.
But beneath the battles over territory there are always deeper forces at work—political power, culture, religion, and economic interests. Often the land is destroyed rather than possessed, yet the struggle for control continues.

The growing tensions in the Middle East, particularly around Iran and involving many nations, could increasingly take on the appearance of a religious war with the banners of Islam and Judaism with Christianity somewhere in the middle. But in reality, the vast majority of people in these faiths do not want war. Religious wars are rarely about pure theology—they are usually about historical grievances, territorial identity, and political power. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but a sword and his sword is exposing and testing every political power structure and religious identity.
Pray that Western powers operate with justice and integrity as well as force in the conflict and not end up facing a lose–lose situation. And as for religion the question becomes how will followers of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity live out their belief systems when those beliefs are tested

THE CHRISTIAN BATTLEFIELD
For Christians, the battle is not over geographical territory but many are becoming divisively contentious over this. Christianity does not seek to control land. It seeks to win the territory of the human heart.

My question is What is the real territorial battle of God’s people today?

Our struggle is not against people or nations. Our battle is against territorial spiritual principalities and powers of darkness that influence the hearts and minds of humanity in every culture and society. (Ephesians 6:12)
Paul said that we all once followed the prince of the power of the air…but now we have been made alive in Christ (Ephesians 2)
Our real conflict is a spiritual battle for the human heart.

IN OUR DISCUSSION GROUPS re THE CHURCH AT EPHESUS Paul saw something powerful happening in that church. He thanked God for two things: Their faith and love for one another in Christ. For Paul, these two signs meant that believers were participating in the life of Jesus.

When the gospel came to Ephesus something dramatic happened.
Acts 19:18 After Paul preached in Ephesus God performed extraordinary miracles through him and many who practiced sorcery confessed their sins, gathered their expensive magic books/scrolls, and burned them publicly and the value of these books was estimated at 50,000 pieces of silver. (twenty million dollars today)

The Spiritual territory had changed hands.

ISRAEL AND THE LAND OF PROMISE
The Bible makes it clear in 2 Thessalonians and in the Book of Revelation that Israel will be occupying Jerusalem in the final battle of Armageddon when the corrupt lawless world leaders oppose the victorious return of Jesus territorially in Jerusalem. But as to what happens between now and then and despite the myriads of prophetic Scriptures, we will have to wait and see.

And in the Old Testament God did promise actual land to Israel. The promise began with Abraham. God said: “To your offspring I will give this land.” (Genesis 12:7- 13:14).
Later the promise to Abraham expanded and the boundaries were defined.
‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’ Genesis 15:18.
Then came ‘boots on the ground’ territorial warfare.
Under Moses God rold Israel not to worship the idols of the surrounding nations. Deuteronomy 9:4–5 It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.”
This was not Israel’s superiority, but God’s judgment on idolatry and injustice.

Eventually the promise was fulfilled. Scripture records:
Joshua 21:43–45: Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side… Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.”

The land became the place where Israel lived out Old Covenant life with God.
But the New Covenant life relationship with God is no longer tied to geographical territory but to territory of the human heart.
The Bible tells us that the old covenant has become obsolete.
Hebrews 8:13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete

A WORD ABOUT ISLAM
Islam does not appear to have the same strict covenant structure of land occupancy found in the Bible as in Judaism. And I do not understand Islamic covenant structure fully, even though I have studied it and corresponded with Muslims on my teaching. They have responded to my recent podcast on the Mystery of Christ and the religious Muslims I have had contact with are of the spiritually devotional sect of Sufism who practice and teach on finding inner peace. Thay have treated me with kindness and are eager to maintain dialogue. (Write to me if you want details). I pray that the Spirit of God touches their hearts and peoples’ hearts everywhere, because the truth that Jesus brings is for everyone.

THE MYSTERY OF ISRAEL
The New Testament describes Israel as a mystery.
Romans 11:25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles (nations) has come in. And then all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins. Concerning the gospel, they are hostile with regard to you but concerning my calling upon them they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.

Paul uses several images:
Religious Israel as an olive tree and national Israel as the fig tree
Spiritual Israel as Christ the true vine with Christian believers as the branches.

God’s covenant purposes all ultimately converge in Christ in the New or Eternal Covenant which transcends time or territory.

The promise to Abraham ultimately expanded far beyond the land of Canaan. Jesus revealed this in the Sermon on the Mount: (Mattthew 5)
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” He was talking about the Kingdom promise of our inheritance in Christ through faith - his Kingdom world to come, which was not of this world.
Paul says in Romans 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.”
And more than that - What began as a promise about land becomes a promise about a whole Renewed Creation (Romans 8:21).

Peter writes of a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.
(2 Peter 3:13) Revelation also speaks of the new heaven and a new earth.

ABRAHAM THE PILGRIM
Interestingly, Abraham himself never possessed the territorial land of Israel.
Stephen when he was being martyred in front of Paul said Abraham did not even own a foot of ground. (Acts 7:5)
He lived there as a sojourner. Why?
Because Abraham was looking beyond the land to something greater, and Paul then wrote about Abraham that he was looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. He desired a better country—a heavenly one.

Hebrews 11:9–10 By faith Abraham went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land…For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God…They desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”
The promise was always bigger than Canaan and the Middle East.
Abraham became a pattern of faith - living as a pilgrim, trusting in a spiritual but tangible inheritance - and looking beyond immediate possession.

THE REAL TERRITORY
When Paul thanked the Ephesian believers for their faith and love, he recognized that the flag of God’s New Creation Territory had already been planted in their hearts and they were conquering that territory in the hearts of the people in Ephesus, and they were winning.
This how we measure up as Christians in the world, no matter what the turmoil and confusion of the world’s values and power struggles impose upon us.

Our identity is not defined by political systems, national borders, or religious conflicts.

It is defined by participation in the life of Christ.

We may see religion fighting against religion in the days ahead, but religion alone doesn’t have Godly power without the centrality of Christ.
It may have political and commercial and territorial power, but it fails the need of the human heart to have love and faith and power in the Holy Spirit.

War is about territory and Jesus has won the decisive war against darkness to gain the territory of the human heart. Onward Christian soldiers.

Paul OSullivan pauloss@icloud.com

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I DID NOT COME TO BRING PEACE BUT A SWORD

Matthew 10:34 Do not think (nomidzo – assume) that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household… He who loves them more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life (psyche – soul) will lose it, and he who loses his life (soul) for My sake will find it.

There appear to be two paradoxes here.
One is that Jesus the ‘prince of Peace‘ comes with a sword
The other is that if we try to save our soul, we lose it.

In the first paradox there are two kinds of peace and two kinds of sword.
In the second paradox there are two kinds of soul – the self-serving soul and the self-surrendered soul. In the middle is – take up your cross and follow me

The two kinds of peace.
The peace of the world of wrong allegiances. (Peace-eirene- to be at one with).
The true peace of our allegiance to Jesus and being at one with him and each other.

The two swords.
The first is the more external sword of truth that divides between our right and wrong religious, social, and political allegiances.
The second sword is the word of truth that divides between soul and spirit in our inner lives as seen in Hebrews 4:12. I will come to that later.

But Jesus here in Matthew is directly quoting Micah Chapter 7, where the people were forming wrong allegiances with ungodly nations and taking on a false identity and not their Godly identity as his people. He is talking about the first kind of peace and the first kind of sword, that involved both religious and political allegiance.
Paul spoke about the religious Jews who resisted the sword of the word of truth about the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought to them. Romans 2:23. You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonour God through breaking the law? For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles (nations) because of you,”
They misunderstood the Kingdom of God as being external and of political power and not of the inner spiritual power of God in Christ.

But Jesus doesn’t bring division – he brings a sword of truth – allegiances bring division.
The same thing is happening even in Christianity on a global scale today where that sword is out there in the public square – in social interaction, social media, and the internet. There have never been so many identity-driven allegiances competing with such hostility regarding cultural ideology and political power. The cross represents the death of any socially protected identity agendas.
AND
Politicians and the media and other influencers have redefined antisemitism in so many ways in the US that more and more evangelical Christians there are becoming divided concerning alliance or non-alliance to the State of Israel, but they don’t seem to fully understand what they are divided over despite the many prophetic Scriptures that deal with Israel. This is especially relevant in the current conflict between The US and Iran on this very day, that profoundly implicates Israel, and these lines of division are growing and the hostile division deeply concerns me BUT that’s what the sword is about…

Only the sword that Jesus brings will shed light and truth on all of that in due time – God has the last Word. The problem with Christians having so many irons in the fire in this, is that there is more heat than light. We should be the bearers of light rather than heat. So stay in prayer. It is more volatile in America and Europe than in Australia, but the same principles apply here in the general global and domestic issues – and our voter polls are scattering in all directions like never before.

But Scripture tells us how to respond as both citizens and Christians in two Godly ways.
The first way is that we are urged to pray for our leaders.
1 Timothy 2:1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

The other way is the perfect way of loving our neighbour. In the parable of the good Samaritan Jesus admonishes the Jewish people about not having love or even care for their Samaritan neighbours because of their religious and political tribalism. Jesus also said But love your enemies, and do good to them, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. So be merciful, even as your Father is merciful (Luke 7:35).

Even if I left the discussion there, we would have some worthwhile aspirations to faithfully attend to with a sense of purpose and reality. But it cannot be left there. The sword goes deeper than political, social, and family allegiances.

THE SECOND SWORD AND THE SECOND PEACE SINCE JESUS DIED AND ROSE AGAIN

There is the second sword that Jesus brought – not just about the outward world of earthly Kingdoms but the sword that divides our inner spiritual world between our soul and our spirit. Without this second inner work we cannot attend faithfully to those other instructions about praying for leaders and loving our neighbours.

The second sword is the logos word of God that divides between our soul and our spirit.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

That refers to the final words of the opening Scripture that Jesus uses to summarise his statement regarding coming with a sword.
He who finds his life (psyche – the soul formed by survival strategies) will lose it, and he who loses his life (the soul formed by survival strategies) for My sake will find it (They find the soul formed by a spiritual renewal of the mind and heart in Christ).

Now the paradox makes sense. The healing and salvation of the soul requires the second sword of re-allegiance. The sword exposes what in the soul is not aligned with the Spirit.
And that sword brings the second Peace (Eirene – at one with) our oneness with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit

To become brothers and sisters living at peace with another in the Church, the Body of Christ, that second sword should cut within us before divisions try to cut between us.
Ephesians 4:1 I beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Paul wrote a message to the church at Rome about how to live in the bonds of peace with an amazing freedom of an uncompromising faith. But this freedom came with loving acceptance of people who had different ideas about how to honour God in the way that they served him. Some observed legalistic religious rules that narrowed their freedom in serving God. Paul said that the criteria we were to abide by was the other person’s sincere heart to honour God in how they served or worshipped him.

Romans 14:1 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord… 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9
10 Why do you judge your brother or sister[a]? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
13let us stop judging on one another. And also do not put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 15 If your brother or sister stumbles because of what you do you are no longer acting in love.

The apostle John declared that this would be the true sign or witness that God was living
within us through Jesus and he Holy Spirit.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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THE SEAL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

I’m reading from the discussion group session two weeks ago from Ephesians 1:11
Ephesians 1:11. In him we have obtained an inheritance (kleroo-share of possession), having been predestined according to the purpose (prothesis-set plan) of him who works all things according to the counsel (boul??- deliberate decision) of his will (thel??ma – what he delights to do). 12. So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory, (People who live it first then share it with others, for them to also believe so that their lives too will bring glory to God, not themselves)
Paul goes on to say…
13. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
14. who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

We had discussed earlier (in Ephesians 1:3) that the Father predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself. And here in verse 11 today we see Jesus obtaining for us another predestined blessing from the Father - his inheritance, his dominion over all things, which he shares fully with us.

I have two major questions for discussion regarding today’s reading.
1. What is the predestined Inheritance?
2. What are the roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our receiving the inheritance?

The predestined inheritance

For those who believe, the Inheritance is sharing in the dominion over all things that Jesus has inherited from the Father, both on the personal level and the utmost level of all things in the heavens and on the earth. It is important to realise that that includes our authority over all the powers of darkness. That has huge significance and consequence for our walk of faith.
Furthermore, this inheritance is a legal and binding declaration. We will come to that shortly…Now we come to the second question.

The roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
There is a pattern of the work of the Trinity in this first chapter of Ephesians in the bestowing of all of these spiritual blessings that we receive. The Father is the origin of every blessing and the one who adopted us into his family, and Jesus is the beloved Son, in and through whom the blessings are shared with us. Jesus brought us in as being as accepted as he is in God’s family, and Jesus is also the one who obtains for us the Inheritance, his inheritance that we now share with him.
The Holy Spirit, is the one who stamps his seal upon all our ‘Spiritual blessings’. (Ephesians 1: 3,14). He is the one who seals God's Covenant bond with us, as the guarantee and guarantor, giving us a foretaste of the fulfillment of all that God has in store for us

As mentioned earlier, the inheritance is a legal and binding declaration.
In the terms of a Covenant of agreement between two parties, there is a contractual arrangement where one person makes a promise of something of value to the other person for a certain cost or sacrifice. They agree on those terms and the transaction occurs. However, another essential ingredient to the terms of agreement is that the Covenant is sealed with a unique seal or personal signature that guarantees full possession of the promise with binding power.

In the Old Testament (Covenant) the promise made by God to Israel his Holy Nation included their deliverance from slavery to the Egyptians and ongoing deliverance and protection from any enemies that oppose them. It also included God’s countless miracle material blessings and favour, and finally, occupation of the Promised Land.

The sacrifice or cost to Israel was their obedience to the Law and Commandments and the sacrificial offerings offered by the priests.) The seal of the Old Covenant of Moses as the Sabbath rest (It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel Exodus 31). It was obeyed on a weekly basis on the seventh day but it was disobeyed totally in the failure to observe the Sabbath rest of one year in every seven years (Leviticus Ch.25), and this was the Sabbath of consequence that God judged Israel for. They disobeyed it for 490years since the reign of Saul and it had the drastic consequence of Israel being defeated in battle and taken into bondage in Babylon for seventy years (490÷7=70) Israel failed to sign off on the seal of that Sabbath rest of faith and failed to pay the Covenant cost or sacrifice of obedience to the law.

Our sabbath rest is now the rest of faith.

Note that the Scriptures make it clear that the legal Covenantal sign of the Sabbath and obedience to the Law no longer apply to the terms of our new Covenant relationship with God as his Holy Nation through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel (Exodus 31). The Bible says that we are to obey the spiritual rest of faith, and enter into the rest of the finished work of Christ – Every Day - (Hebrews 4:1,8) Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it…There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his own works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience

In the New Covenant the Promise is summed up in the promises of all the spiritual blessings that we see here in Ephesians and also elsewhere, as in the gift of reconciliation and mercy and forgiveness and the Law being written on our New hearts. (2Corinthians 5, Romans 5, Hebrews 8 and 10, ++).

The sacrifice or cost of those promises has been fully paid by Jesus Christ in his sinless death upon the cross and his resurrection and ascension. The sign or seal of the New Covenant is the receiving of the Holy Spirit of Promise by someone who believes, as we read in verses 13 and 14. All of this is not just as a blessing to us but also through us to glorify God.
13. In him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14. who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Jesus said in Acts…
Acts 1: 4 Wait for my Father’s promised gift, which you have heard me speak about.
For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Acts 1:8 you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The Book of Acts also tells the story of Paul arriving at Ephesus and finding people there who claimed to be disciples and believers. Something prompted Paul to `question them concerning their spirituality, and he said ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they replied No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.

Tongues is not the evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit by faith, but simply ONEsign, like prophecy, along with other faith assurances ranging from quiet serenity to joyful exuberance. In the mid-seventies I was once sharing about the Baptism of the holy Spirit and a few of us would then pray for people to receive it, and many people spoke in tongues upon receiving it as that had also been mentioned. I prayed for one man who was a strong Christian and loved God’s Word, and when I prayed, he did not speak in tongues but began to joyously laugh and I felt a witness in my spirit that he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But the deacon standing next to me said that the man had not received the Holy Spirit because he didn’t speak in tongues and he was taught that tongues was the evidence. I had to disagree, saying that the Bible did not say that tongues was the evidence, but that it was just a sign (1Corinthians 14:22). There are many signs and this fellow’s joyous laughter was a sure sign - and he laughed from that day on whenever we were gathered together in worship or whenever he was touched by the Holy Spirit. Some of you will remember him. Now and again someone would say I should have told him to stop laughing but I never did – it was real.

The activity of the Holy Spirit of promise is a seal of the promises of the New Covenant for a believer. However Jesus taught about another prior activity of the Holy Spirit for unbelievers, which was the Holy Spirit of conviction, which works in every person who comes into the world. Jesus taught the disciples that when he left them he would send the Holy Spirit into the world (not just the church) John 16:8.But if I go, I will send The New Helper (The Holy Spirit). And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me.

Conviction of sin is the truth about the sin of unbelief – guilt doesn’t convict or change people, conviction does, and righteousness is about the grace to becoming aligned with God’s will (righteousness), otherwise it’s self-righteousness –

and the truth of Satan being judged is about having freedom from the bondage of darkness and the overcoming of Satan – as that is the other spirit that is at work in the world (Ephesians Ch.2). The Bible says that the people loved hiding and covering up in darkness more than coming into the light (who has never been there? John 3:19). However, the Bible also says that where sin abounds grace does much more abound (Romans 5:20).

So no matter how darkness may abound in these days, the more we can abound in the grace and truth that the Holy Spirit works in us through the Gospel of the love and goodness of God towards. One person working in the simplicity of that grace and truth will affect everything and everyone in their sphere of the world around them. That is the Holy Spirit’s work.

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THE MYSTERY
I’m reading the first two verses from our discussion group Scripture reading last week.
Ephesians 1:9-10 making known to us the mystery (Mysterion – not just hidden but unuttered [mu??] or not spoken until its prepared or set time) of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10. A plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (also expounded in Colossians 1.15-21)

Some scholars think Paul wrote Ephesians and not Colossians and some think he wrote Colossians and not Ephesians. However, Paul’s account of the ‘mystery’ and the Plan in both epistles is identical.

3 questions
1. What is the mystery? The ‘Mystery made known’ is the life of Jesus living and speaking God’s will in us and through us.

1. What is the Plan to unite all things in Christ? The plan of uniting every created thing in Christ is God joining himself to his own creation through Jesus. Jesus entered into to our humanity and we enter into his divinity. Heaven and earth are joined together forever in him

2. What is the Gospel? Ephesians 3:3 by revelation He made known to me the mystery, as I have briefly written already [CH.1]... that the Nations (Ethnos-all ethnic groups, cultures, mankind) should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ - through the gospel. THAT IS THE GOSPEL.

THE MYSTERY
Paul’s revelation of this mystery which is the life of Jesus living and speaking God’s will in us and through us by the Holy Spirit was spoken to the Ephesians and the Colossians and then written in 62 AD as his epistles to them from prison in Rome.

Colossians 1:26-29 the mystery (mysterion) which has been hidden from ages and from generations but now has been revealed to His saints - To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles (or Nations ‘Ethnos’ - all ethnic groups, cultures, mankind) which is Christ in you, the hope of glory

THE PLAN
What is the plan of uniting all of creation together in Christ?
The love between Father Son and Holy Spirit in Heaven before the time of creation was perfect and complete and They agreed together in all things in perfect truth (1John 5:7KJV). And that love and truth was compelled of itself (2 Corinthians 5:14) to overflow into the lives of all created beings to bless them. Firstly, the angels were created as pure spirit beings, spiritually higher than our physically limited humanity, (Hebrews 2:7). And no created being, angelic or human, possessed God’s perfect capacity of this divine love and truth. But angels could come before the face of God and communicate and hear God speak, and that is why one imperfect angel called Lucifer fell in his pride and deception, and also why he tempted imperfect Adam and Eve to fall. The angels would have heard God say ‘Let us make man in our own image and let them have dominion over every living creature and over all the earth… So God created man in His own image… male and female He created them.’ (Genesis 1:26,27).

The angels saw and celebrated the material creation from beginning to end (Job 38:4) and for Lucifer, this privileged dominion over everything in creation being given to these puny humans was too much for his pride and ego to accept, and he was outraged – No! That’s my inheritance! And he took many other angels into his rebellion

And the Bible records God’s verdict upon his unjust claims.
Isaiah 14:1-15 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart:
I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,To the lowest depths of the Pit.
(5 I wills + 5 Your will be done wounds of Jesus on the cross)

And so Lucifer decided in his darkness and deception to prevent puny mortals from laying claim to their just inheritance. He provoked these lesser beings - Adam and Eve into a presumptuous rebellion against a perfect God, tempting them to disobey God and inciting them to resent God for not allowing them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - believing that God was selfishly afraid that they would become like God if they did. So they ate the fruit and they took the darkness and deception into their souls, and from then on, our human souls were destined to live out from our discontented vulnerability, and to defend ourselves and justify ourselves and war against ourselves and other people. Human relationships drastically damaged

But God had foreseen all of this, and he had planned a perfect plan before creation even began. He had decided to join himself as God, pure Spirit being, to his creation, by coming as Jesus the Son of the Father to live within puny vulnerable human form upon the earth. The Bible calls this astounding truth Reconciliation, which is translated from the Greek word katalasso, a “mutual transformation” of God and humanity into an entirely New Creation. And God took the first step to reconcile humanity in this cosmic merging of Being through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, overcoming the distrust and separation and hostility in us to God that was caused by sin.

Paul is the only one who explains Reconciliation in this way in verses like 2 Corinthians 5:18-2 ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. And Romans 5:10 about Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection. The Holy Spirit gives us grace and faith to accept and live in that reconciliation, enabling us to overcome sin and a self-centered mindset. The Holy Spirit infuses divine love and truth into our hearts and minds, and giving us the gift of a New Heart and a renewed mind to know the truth of who God is and who we are. This is our salvation – the healing of our soul, and this is what God desires for all of us.
God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Timothy 2:4).

THE GOSPEL
The Gospel is the Plan of that mystery being declared to all the world as The Good News, as we read earlier in Ephesians 3.
Paul never preached the bad news The bad news often shared as being the gospel. IE. if you repent from your sins and ask God for forgiveness you won’t go to hell.

I went to a church growth conference in Seoul Korea in the 1990’s at Yonggi Cho’s church. There were 700 of us pastors attending his 500,000 strong church. Cho was a former Buddhist and a very disciplined man of great influence in South Korea. He told us that many Christian authors including Peter Wagner and others you would know had interviewed him to write their books on church growth. He said they asked how it started and he’d tell them ’I prayed to God ’ and they would write that down. Then they’d say, ‘what then?’ and he’d say ‘I taught the people in small groups to study the word carefully and obey it’ This was all written down.

Then he said ‘the authors have sold a lot of books, writing down the principles and enlarging each principle, but they are not going to give you church growth because even though the principles are good that wasn't the way the church growth happened. What happened was God touched my life. God had given me some signs and wonders in my ministry especially in the villages, so I often preached out there and many people came to my meetings. They knew my discipline and zeal and I wanted to see them getting to know God. But something had to change in me for me to reach their hearts.
Cho told us what happened. He said he went out one day to a village and saw people on the side of the road and he said ‘are you coming to the meeting tonight?’ They lifted their weary heads up and said no Pastor Cho, we are miserable enough - And when you preach you make it worse for us because we feel so condemned. You are so strict and holy, and you tell us what sinners we are, and we feel too unworthy to get close to God. Cho then told us – that was when he realised he was preaching the bad news of what they must do to be worthy – he was preaching discipline and zeal, and not God’s goodness and grace. God changed him that day and everything else changed for him and for Seoul Korea.’

So the mystery of his will is to lovingly unfold to us his plan to join us to his divine life – and that is the gospel. Once we know it and believe it we cannot unbelieve it, because when we pursue that truth with our full heart and all our mind it pursues us into every corner of our lives.

As we now partake of our communion – the communion of the Body of Christ, remember how Paul admonished the Corinthian church because of internal factional disputing and judging of one another which finally created 36,000 denominations. Paul said they were holding their communion services in an unworthy manner. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged Rather than judge one another judge ourselves. (1Corinthians 13:30) We can be discerning of doubtful doctrinal emphases but not judge harshly. We can pray for more love and agreement and mercy, and pray for the Gospel of reconciliation, ‘Christ in us the hope of glory’, be preached in all the world for a witness. Amen.

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What I'm calling today's word is predestination and grace and faith. I'Il read from Ephesians chapter one, verses five to eight,
which is the passage we read in our discussion groups a couple of weeks ago. Starting from verse five, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure or good purpose, Eudokia, of his will, according to the riches of his grace, which is made abundant toward us in all wisdom and understanding.
So recently in our group discussions, we began to discuss and explore the extravagance of God's love, and his powerful promises to us of what I've just read. Predestination and grace, and being adopted to belong to his family, partakers of his life through Jesus, partakers of the nature of God. The first chapter of Ephesians is a mighty trumpet blast of what God has done through Jesus Christ, and through the work of his unlimited atonement for humanity, never limit the atonement
work of God, for everybody.
If one died, all were dead. So I've got three questions today.
What is predestination?
Well, the short answer is, it's God's purpose for our life. What is grace? The divine energy that accomplishes our predestination.
What about faith? Predestination and grace only become our reality when we believe. So I've answered the three questions.
We can go home now. But really, I want to look at these three questions in greater depth. So we'll look at these three questions.
Predestination is purpose driven. It is God's foreordained plan for a person's life or role. It is not a statement about going to heaven or hell, as the Calvinists much later mistakenly interpreted.
You've got to search the scriptures to see this, and it's very clear. Through Christ's atoning work, when Jesus brought his divinity into all of humanity, we are also brought into adoption, becoming part of his family. We're then
transformed into Christ's likeness to become co-labours with
him in his work in the world.
There's our journey. Right smack in the middle of it is the grace of God. We try that journey on our own without the grace of God, and we can become very good citizens with a good conscience doing the best we can, but we need God's grace to be able to walk in his will for our lives, empowered by his life.
Grace is the divine energy that accomplishes this divine purpose, making this gospel of good news, that's what the gospel is, possible. That is then believed upon by us. And this displays God's wisdom and strategic brilliance.
And that was the last verse that we read when we did the discussion group. God thought that through and gave it to us.
He wants to express who he is through us.
That's his desire. So we'll look at the grace. The plan of being predestined is energized by grace from God's side.
All comes from him. The word grace is cardis, which means a gift. It's not primarily about emotionally feeling favored.
It is God's favor, but we don't often feel very favored going through tough times. But God's grace is still available. If it weren't, we wouldn't be able to go through them with him and being empowered by his Spirit in faith.
It's God's powerful and operative transforming presence that enables the purpose of our predestination to be achieved.
What does grace do? Is it like electricity?
No, it is a force. Is it just emotion? No, grace creates a relational bond in our hearts.
The Bible says, a new heart I will give you, in Ezekiel 36. That's the power of grace. It changes the disposition of our hearts.
We desire to do for God and with God. That's his gift, that's his covenant. And that works the transformative change of the new desires that God has willed for us.
Look at things relationally, then you're looking at God and what he does, why he does it, and how we can respond. But without faith, if we don't respond by faith and say, I believe that, that grace is there laying idle and fruitless. It's in vain.
Don't just think of it as something that may be available. He said, approach the throne of grace, receiving mercy, so that you'll find grace in times of need. We need the mercy because we don't do it very expertly.
We bumble our way through. And God says, I don't care how much you bumble your way through. I'm not looking at your human performance index.
I'm looking at your heart. Dispose to me, doing the best you can, and this grace is available. But tell yourself that I'm being merciful to you because you're not very merciful to yourself.
You're a bit hard on yourself. I've forgiven your sins, you know that. But you're worried about your performance, don't.
The work of atonement is operating on about eight and a half billion people on the planet right now. But the problem is that a scarce number of people, including many churchgoers, don't know that or believe it. That work can only become a reality for people who will hear it and believe it and respond to it by faith.
And today, we'll look at how we can respond to it by faith. Paul was saved from wasting his pre-destined future when he was struck down on the road to Damascus. He was pretty proud of his performance up till then, as a religious man, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
But then, he was struck down by the Lord Jesus, and he believed, he was baptized, and he received the power of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 1, Paul writes in verse 17, and here's the predestination part. It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and invited me through his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him amongst the Gentiles, or the nations, the unbelievers.
Paul knew that this was given by God's grace, but not only given by God's grace, it was to be lived through God's grace.
Paul said, his grace towards me was not in vain. Wasn't futile, but it can lie wasted.
I've already said, the scripture actually, confidently enter, come to the throne of grace. So we can see that all of this is God's doing. If that's God's doing, what is our belief?
It is our doing. It's believing everything that God is doing, and believing that what he's doing is true, and real, and personal for each one of us. It's always doing, the doing.
Now, my faith, my personal level, sometimes involves getting out of my own way, and to stop worrying that I'm not fulfilling God's predestined purpose in the ordinary, daily doing of what I'm doing. Do I have enough faith and grace? Am I actually doing just exactly what you want me to do, Lord?
I better try and think through this harder. God says, my goodness, I wake up then. I wake up to myself and decide to trust that God knows what He's done.
He knows what He's done for me, and what He is now doing for me, and He just wants me to trust Him in that I'm doing for you, in all the things that are happening. And when I trust God, simply, come to my senses, faith floods in. Not faith that I'm going to get what I want, but faith that God can now get what He wants.
The moment we start telling ourselves that we don't have enough faith, we stop having faith. It's a bad conversation.
Our soul's outward, disordered mindset of what is real has taken over from our God-ordained spiritual reality, what He's ordained.
Now, let me explain how God's ordered spiritual reality can turn into a disordered soul reality. That's very important to me. Everything that is spirit desires to be expressed in some outward way.
Spirit cannot just exist, isolated, doing nothing. Spirit wants expression, no matter what kind of spirit it is. And you can name hundreds of them.
The human spirit, a spirit of fear, God's spirit, a political spirit, a religious spirit. They all want expression in some way, and they manifest themselves through whoever's available to give way to that spirit. But we have our predestined spirit in us.
God, as a pure spirit being, lovingly desired to express himself through us. God as spirit wants far more to express who he is than any other spirit would. He is spirit.
The Holy Spirit yearns jealously for us. Let us be manifested, expressed through you. So God desired to do that, to express himself through humanity.
And that occurred perfectly through the life of Jesus. That was the one, the only one. That happened perfectly.
And the atonement of Jesus on the cross allows that expression of the life of Jesus through us by the Holy Spirit in us. That's how it happens. God's predestined purpose for us in Christ is our reality.
That's what God and God's spirit wants to express through us.
His purpose for us, him, with us, in that. It is our I am reality.
God said, I am who I am. In Exodus chapter three, Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. John eight, Paul said, I am what I am by the grace of God.
1 Corinthians 15. Now, this is the key. We can become the expression of who God wants us to be, by the grace of God, if we believe it.
We are who we are by the grace of God. God is the source of our true I am spiritual being. He created it before the foundation of the world.
But what do we do with that spiritual reality? Well, the Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 15, that we generate a soul, genomai. We create a soul, a faulty expression of our spiritual being, which becomes flawed and damaged throughout our lives because of survival mechanisms that we create, starting from a young age.
That's our doing. Our spirit wants to express itself. We are spirit, soul, and body.
And we express, through our soul, an I Am that has had to react to everything that's going on around us. We learn, from a young age, to strategise, to defend, or to advance ourselves, through the difficult circumstances of our lives. We create another I Am in our souls.
And that becomes the I Am that other people see. They see that as who we are. Oh, there's that cranky person again.
There's that angry one. There's that difficult one. There's that one that seems to be always feeling shameful and guilty all the time.
Why do they do that? So that soul becomes the expression of who we are, to other people, and absolutely to ourselves, with all the reactions and hard to get on with behaviours that we wish we didn't have as well. The reactive strategies have become the soul's unhelpful helpers in times of difficulty and stress.
So we have to discover the true I am, whose source is God's reality for us. That's the journey of the soul. 1 Corinthians 2, 11 tells us, gives us the clue on how to go on this journey.
And I'll be doing this in the course later this month, the healing salvation of the soul. It says this, For what man knows the things or the parts, the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him. And even so, no one knows the things of God, except the spirit of God.
So we can get to know, because our spirit, Bible says in Proverbs, the spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord that searches out all the inward parts. We can allow the Holy Spirit to help us search out and find out, what did I dump into my soul when I got into reaction at that time, when I was a little one, or when I was a teenager, or what I'm doing even now?
The Holy Spirit says, I'm gonna help you to stop trying to use your unhelpful helpers to help yourself.
We can be guided by the Holy Spirit who becomes the new helper. That Jesus promised, he said in John 14, I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever. Jesus didn't have to make and create helpers.
He had the Holy Spirit full on, all the time, in the grace of God. He was the perfect expression of God in humanity, and he's saying to us, I'm giving you my life, and I'm going to get you back from that disordered soul into being able to express who you are, predestined to be in your spirit, by my grace. So the healing of the soul course, I'll be starting in our mid-week meetings, is based on this spiritual understanding of how to find our true I am, in a non-threatening way.
We don't go in there and say, oh, what a terrible sin. And we find a helper that we've created, and it's a helper that says, you're not matching up. You could do better than this.
It's called the, you can do better helper. You ever found one of them? Well, the you can do better helper is not a sin, but it does cause us to miss the mark, because we'll make errors of judgment, and we will start getting into things that become just us reacting, and our self-help, whatever other helper it could be, our anger helper, that will be the thing that wants to run things.
But there's the try harder helper. Just look at that for a sec.
We've all got one of them, but I've seen a try harder helper, when I was sharing with a person, I've seen that try harder helper cause that person to feel, when it was revealed that that's it, they felt, oh, well, that's a sinful helper.
I am angry, I'm gonna get rid of that. I say, no, no, no. That try harder helper has got you to where you are now, for your sake, trying to help you to get through the sense that you couldn't do things properly.
It was trying to help you get over the fear of failure. Don't get angry at it. It was doing the best it could.
You made it, you created it. But don't get angry, just say, you can move over now. I've got another helper.
You see, this course that I'm doing is not threatening. Oh, you'd better repent from that help. No, acknowledge it and say, thank you, bye.
And there's a process. We find the true I am. We get to know the things of the strategic helper parts in our soul.
We ask for wisdom from the Holy Spirit as our new helper that Jesus promised us. God's reality of who we are, not our concept of self that is lesser and smaller because of the awful things that have happened to us, the things that we wanted that haven't happened to us, all because of what? Certain people, our own mistakes, disappointing circumstances?
Well, suffering is part of life. But unnecessary suffering happens when we make these things that happened define who we are. They're not you, they've happened to you.
And that's, it's not God's purpose for your life to be defined by the things that happened to you, it's God's purpose for your life to be with him in the things that happened to you. So, the happenings, let's see these happenings as outside of us, and our soul reacting to them. But, what's inside of us?
That's the, who is inside of us? God is inside of us. The things are outside of us.
1 John 4, 4. Greater is he that is in you, than that which is in the world. So, I spoke about finding wisdom.
What wisdom do we need to get in order to understand our true reality? The fact that greater is he that is in you, than that which is in the world. Well, James tells us.
James 1, 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reprimanding, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith.
I tell people, you're gonna get the wisdom you need as you diligently apply yourself to what we're doing here. It will come, God will speak. I'm thinking, am I bold enough to say that?
I am, because I see it happen all the time, because the Bible says do it. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Well here we are, the two mindsets. The mindset of the soul, or the mindset of the spirit.
Spiritually minded is life and peace. Carnally minded is death.
Bible says the carnal mind cannot please God.
It's hostile to God. Humanity. But the spiritual mind is in harmony with God.
And James here says, you're double-minded and you'll become unstable. Now double-minded is a good phrase because it's speaking about having a spiritual mind and a soul mind, the two I ams. But look, I want to open that word up to you.
Double-minded in the Greek doesn't have the word mind in it.
I still think it's a great phrase because the mind is in the soul.
And there is a mind in the spirit.
The mind that knows Jesus is in the spirit. The mind that bumbles around out here is in the soul. We'll talk about that later.
But the Greek word for double-minded is di-psychos. That means double-souled. It's soul.
It's a soul problem. It means a double-souled person. A soul in conflict with itself.
With a mind that is in conflict with the mind of the spirit. I continually see the Holy Spirit giving wisdom to people about their true being as they do the healing of the soul process. It's the grace of God doing that, and our faith receiving it, and believing it, and living it out.
So, what about faith? What is the goal of our faith? And here's a key scripture, 1 Peter 1.9, receiving the end.
The word there in Greek is telos, the purpose, the end of our faith. The salvation and healing of your soul. That's what your faith is for.
To get your soul back in shape, in alignment with your spiritual destiny. That's what the course is for. So, when I'm sitting in the presence of God, I want to come back, shake myself, wake myself up, and say, soul, move over.
I want to hear what God is saying about me, to be the l am that I know you say 1 am. And I bring scriptures to mind. I do a whole lots of, well, there are a whole lots of things I don't do.
I don't try and analyse myself. I just think about what God is doing and how great He is and He's wonderful at time. That's what I do.
But I bring scriptures to mind. I thank God I'm in His presence, even if I don't feel anything. I thank God that He's doing a mighty work in me and I don't even feel it's happening.
I can feel actually quite at odds with myself, but my spirit is saying, wake up, God's at work, give this time, be still, know that I'm God. You don't have to feel it. All right, thank you, Lord.
But here's some scriptures that I bring to mind, and I'll just leave it with this. Paul says in Ephesians 3.20, God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. That's the power of the Holy Spirit.
Take out the book of Philippians and have a look in Philippians chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three. In Philippians chapter one, you'll find this. He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
He's doing the work. Philippians 2.13. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do what is his highest purpose for your life.
His good purpose. I mean, oh my Lord, you're at work in this, and I've been trying to do all the work. And he says, I told you, be still, know this.
And third, in Philippians chapter three, verse 21, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself. You know, when I'm sitting there, I can feel restless, agitated. This is a waste of time.
And time goes by, and I start feeling subdued. I think I'm doing a pretty good job here of calming myself. I'm supposed to say, that's not you.
I'm subduing that restless heart of yours, that anxious, fidgety mind that wants to analyze. Give me some more time. Okay, Lord, thank you.
Ill be still and know you're God, and I'll leave the rest to God.
So, thank you, Lord. Help us to learn to let go of outward happenings, to let you happen within us at all times.
Amen.

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I CANNOT DO ALL THINGS
Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through (en – in) Christ who strengthens me.
That is a wonderful Scripture but what does ‘all things’ mean and what does ‘through’ mean? To get the full meaning of all this I need to mention something a little irregular in the English interpretation of that text. The correct English word for ‘through’ in that Scripture is ‘in’. The Bible uses the English word ‘through’ 119 times in Paul’s epistles, and the Greek word for through is always dia except in that one text here where the word en is used, and en means in, not through, so my reading of this would be ‘I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.
This brings home the point that Christ is the one doing the ‘all things’ that he wants to happen and I’m being strengthened in doing it with him. Am I being too pedantic, isn’t me doing it through Christ okay? think it through, because with Paul this is all about being IN Christ – IN Christ is relational, being part of God’s life, but doing things through Christ puts us in charge and not God, like us doing something through a lawyer - it is utilitarian and non-relational. You’ve seen sportsmen on TV signalling to Heaven that they are going to win this match through God – that seems a little presumptuous. But saying ‘I can do all things IN Christ’ puts God in charge, as he does the things with and through us as the earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power is of God and not of us and it’s a proclamation of yielded faith by us. What I’m saying is never going to change the way this verse is written or even said, probably even by me. But if I’m going to do something by faith I want to understand what I am really proclaiming and why.

Paul says in Galatians - it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in the Son of God by faith, (Galatians 2:20). Being in Christ was Paul’s revelation, his message – Christ in you the hope of glory – his glory. (Colossians 1:27) – Christ in us and us in him. Paul said that he wanted to be found in him (Philippians 3:9)

I mentioned in my last talk that Moses was hidden in the cleft of a rock and only saw the glory of God after it had passed by because God had said you cannot see My face and live. (Exodus 33:17). Paul says that rock was Christ. He said the rock that followed Israel through their journey in the wilderness was Christ (1Corinthians 10:4). Moses being hidden in the cleft of rock is us being hidden in Christ. The Bible says your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). God was prophesying to us that ‘In Christ you will see the work I have done and you will know that it was me that has done it from heaven and not just you on earth, and somehow, we have done it together!!

Previously I also shared the story of God being with Paul in that shipwreck at Malta. No one was lost as Paul had prophesied to them ‘An angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me…not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed (Acts 27:23). The people of Malta then lit a fire for them because it was cold and raining, and as Paul gathered firewood, a viper bit his hand and the islanders expected him to die, assuming some kind of divine justice, but Paul simply shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. They then think he is a god. Then Publius the magistrate of Malta hosts them generously and Paul heals his father who has a raging fever and the rest of the sick on the island came and were healed.
Malta wasn’t Paul’s idea. God went to Malta and Paul was IN Christ seeing God at work through himself as the clay vessel. The Holy Spirit and Paul did it together! Even Jesus said Truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father do. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise”.
I have two more questions today.
The first question is - What does it mean to be ‘in Christ’?’
The second question is how I can ‘do all things through (in) Christ who strengthens me’

There is a clue to understanding what being IN Christ means in what Paul said in that shipwreck incident at Malta. He says ‘An angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me.” (Acts 27:2). Paul knew he belonged to God IN Christ.
The way we know that that we are IN something is by knowing that we belong, like being in a family or a friendship or a group or a church community. We are accepted and we can be ourselves there and share the care there, as a part of it.

The Bible says that Jesus died for all of mankind because we all belong to him. Paul said We are held in (synech??) by Christ's love for us. We are certain that if one died for all, then all of us have died. (2 Corinthians 5:14).
That means that because of what Jesus has done we all belong right from the start even if we do not know it or believe it - we are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6.), forgiven in Christ and belonging to him. He didn’t ask for our permission he just did it. and we challenge people to believe it – that’s the Gospel.

Paul spoke of this as an eternal reality in God’s destiny for humanity when he spoke to the Athenians about their unknown God in Acts 17:26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times (Kairos) and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being…

When a person knows that they belong their hearts can open up to hearing and understanding and believing and finding new hope for their lives. So then belonging and believing lead to uprightness in behaving - belong believe behave – instead of ‘if you behave and truly believe what we believe we will tell you if you belong’.

The second question was how can I ‘do all things through (in) Christ who strengthens me’
This requires that I ask myself three things when considering what lays ahead for me – a) what do I expect will happen? – then when something happens comes b) what actually happened? – then comes c) where was I surprised?
I find that concerning point a) I overate my self expectations, and b) what actually happens confirms point a, then c) I am surprised at how much more God does than I could ever have expected. It is God that takes us into things IN Christ, not us that takes Christ into all that we plan. There are shipwrecks and Malta experiences. We do our upmost and we see God do his highest.
I will illustrate with a story.
I went to a pastors conference in the late 90’s with my old friend the late Hal Oxley. We had visited Toronto Canada and then visited the revival meetings in Pensacola and finally attended a pastors’ conference in Houston Texas in the Lakewood church now run by Joel Osteen but then run by Joel’s father John Osteen who was a very gifted and anointed man, with a healing and evangelical ministry and much wisdom and integrity. Hal had been a friend of John Osteen for some years. There were over two thousand pastors and leaders there and Hal received a warm welcome. He was also a storehouse of wisdom and experience and had conducted similar leadership events in Melbourne with a Q and A session at the end. Hal was the pioneer of the Christian School movement on the East Coast of Australia, and I visited his school before starting Northern Beaches Christian School – here in this actual building in 1981.

At the end of John Osteens conference there was also a question-and-answer session which Osteen conducted single handedly, and Hal was riveted by the complex questions of the pastors, and I knew he would have answered their questions excellently. The questions dealt with problems of administration and church programs including youth groups and home groups and financial management questions and some weird legalistic ones about tithing and church discipline. John Osteen would quietly listen and pause and speak his wisdom and Hal and I were impressed. But we began to notice that time after time especially with the tougher complex questions John Osteen would give the same answer, over and over again. He would say ‘Do the best you can and trust the holy Ghost’ (he didn’t say Holy Spirit). All the while Hal was writing comments on his ever-present note cards and showing them to me – comments like Vision statement needed here, or delegated authority essential etc. And I would nod, thinking this is going to be quite some conversation later.

Then right at the end one pastor said he wanted to start a Christian school, and his question was ‘what is the first thing I should do if I wanted to start a Christian school in Alabama?’ I looked at Hal and he leaned over to me and said ‘I’d love to answer this one, and I thought just what a blessing that would be. I said to him ‘what would you say?’ and Hal looked at me and said with a grin ‘do the best you can and trust the Holy Ghost’. I got the giggles, and we both had to hold ourselves in check and not explode laughing.

But that answer was strikingly enough the simple truth of faith for all those difficult challenges. Think of some major decisions you’ve made lately doing the best you could – and the ones coming up. We belong to someone who belongs to us and who gets things done perfectly with us in the midst of our imperfection. God says to us – ‘In Christ you will see what I have done, and you will know that it was me and not just you, but somehow we did it together!!’ So do the best you can and trust the Holy Ghost and watch as God brings his will to pass in your life. He will do the things, and we will give him the glory.
When you are in thr midst of something, doing it the best you can and you have an outcome in mind, and something goes wrong and the challenge seems too great. I’ve found that the thig to do is to capture that moment and realise that that moment of challenge, of difficulty of self-consciousness – that moment belongs to God. He hasn’t dumped you in it and said ‘you sort this out’, no he’s in that and when you sort that out, however well or not you sort it out, God is there sorting it out for you in the world of the unseen, wanting you to know that and be conscious of that and believe that. You may not see an instant miracle happen but as you believe that God is at work it gets you out of your self consciousness and the moment belongs to God even though you may feel that this is still a real challenge for you. It is only afterwards that you realise that you don’t have to be the master of that occasion. You’ve been brought into it and God is in it and your faith is there. Then afterward God will say, ‘see, we did that together’ – we say who me? And od says ‘well done good and faithful servant’ – amen
Paul OSullivan – pauloss@icloud.com

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WRITTEN IN THE STARS FOR SIGNS AND TIMES PART 2

Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.

Last week we spoke about the witness in the stars for signs, and today we are looking at the witness of the stars for times. When God proclaimed, "Let there be light," He initiated not only the existence of matter but also the unfolding of space and time itself. He had created an energy outside of his spiritual energy, the energy of light, the closest natural energy that can be compared and contrasted to his all-powerful Spiritual energy

Created light preceded the matter that was created to become the universe of galaxies of stars, and what lies between us and the stars is not just time and space, but an immense delay of emptiness and silence that stretches across time because sound cannot travel where there are no particles to transmit it. Time is limited by the speed of light, and space is also measured by that. One light-year is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometres. With a Hubble telescope we could see a protostar heat up and eventually ignite, and we would say it is a new star, but what we observe is in fact very very old.
What we see and touch in our immediate temporal world is a familiar instant, close and graspable reality, but the stars teach us about the waiting and silence of time delay and that becomes a parable concerning our faith, as we shall see.

The Bible describes God’s essential nature as two things; God is light and God is love.
The power of the energy of God’s light brought into being the material and temporal world of matter with its beauty of created order. But the power of God as light is also truth which speaks into our spirit, and the spiritual energy of God’s light is not limited to time and space – It is everywhere at the one time.

The power of the energy of God’s love brought into being the lifeblood of relational harmony and unity and goodness and blessing to all mankind through Jesus.
For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son… (John 3:16)

I have two questions.
Why do we experience the delay time of God’s instant presence with us when we know he is there within us?
Why do we experience an apparent distance between God and us even though we know he is closer than our own thoughts?

Regarding the delay time of presence - it does not take God time to get to us, nor does it take us time to get to God.
The delay occurs because it takes time for us to get away from our soul self, and into our true spiritual self in Christ. We have taught our soul to live in the immediate temporal world, which is always instant, close and graspable. But the stars teach us a parable about the waiting of delay time, and the delay time is the often reluctant yielding of our soul life to our faith-ready spirit life. Putting off our old soul self and being renewed in the mind of our spirit and putting on the New Creation spirit self. (Ephesians 4:20)

Regarding the apparent distance between us and God - Our soul self lives in self-consciousness, which makes us aware of our own insufficiency of falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That makes a separation between us and God (Isaiah 59:2) but it does not make a separation between God and us – he is always close. He says I will have mercy upon your unrighteousness, and your iniquities I will remember no more! (Hebrews 10.16)
The Bible tells us to exchange our idea of our self as an unlovable self, for God’s idea of us as his deeply loved child (1John 3:20) who grows into his likeness because of his love for us. Our self-serving soul life should not be allowed to take the mastery over our true spiritual reality as partakers of the divine nature - ‘God with us’. Our choice to receive.
Sometimes the honest thing to say is ‘I find that hard to do - Please help me Lord’.
We can trust that God’s plans are unfolding in our lives even in the midst of our own doubts and mistakes and suffering and the attacks of darkness upon us.
David said in Psalm 139 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your intentional thoughts about me, O God (rêa). They cannot be numbered! (Psalms 139:16)

So there is a book about each one of us with our name on it and there are special times of grace arranged by God that he has purposed for us - to receive as an act of his sovereign grace or to access by persistent faith (Romans 5:2). There are two kinds of times in the Bible –Chronos time – clock time, with its seconds and minutes and hours and years of ordinary day-to-day time, and Kairos time - special times of grace arranged by God that he has purposed for us. Jesus lived in both Chronos time and Kairos time like all of us. Not everything in the everyday clock time life of Jesus needs to be in the Bible because the Bible is not just a history book but a book of revelation and faith and purpose. And so it is with us - God’s book about us is not just a history book but a narrative of the eternal milestones of purpose and meaning that he has planned for our lives. How many milestone opportunities have we missed? There are things we can do. It is called REDEEMING THE TIME

Ephesians 5:15 See that you live diligently, redeeming (getting back) the time (Kairos) because the days are evil.
I believe that we are living in a time when God is restoring his Kairos occasions for us that we may have lost or neglected throughout the Chronos minutes and years of our busy everyday lives. But the Bible says that God restores those years (Joel 2:25) – not in clock time but the times of his Kairos purpose and meaning to us through the work of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit. This grace can abound sovereignly in special times of the outpouring of God’s Spirit as at Pentecost and at times of spiritual refreshing in sovereign moves of the Holy Spirit. But we can also access this grace through our faith (Romans 5:2) That is for all of us – all of humanity – his grace includes his forgiveness to us and the restoration of his eternal purposes for us. This is what brings a renewed connection with God and the healing of our souls.

We can’t get all our Chronos years back – they’re gone, but we can miraculously get the lost Kairos opportunities restored in a few Chronos weeks or months – and I’m seeing that happen in people in these times. The Apostle Paul saw one Kairos moment restore his entire past on the road to Damascus, and then he learned to manage living in both time frames in perfect harmony. God’s word from heaven shines upon us to unveil a life of fulfilment in God. It is time to let God begin to rewrite our narrative and we will have so much to be thankful for, living in a new spiritual energy not an old natural energy.

I have found the following pathway of redeeming the time helpful So note the Scriptural references. Every moment of chronos time is filled with something. But when we interrupt our busy clock time and ask God to awaken us to the present moment Kairos energy of loving partnership with him, we let God rewrite his eternal events back into our life. This waiting on God and waiting for God takes practice. Each moment of time belongs to God, and it is filled with his love for us – not because he just decided to do it because we turned up – no it is the very nature of God that his energy of love and light fills every moment of time.

We start to see by faith that the waiting time is not passive but active, being filled with the supernatural unseen activity of God, bringing his loving eternal purpose and meaning into ordinary daily things, even loss and suffering.
I find it helpful to pray in this way. ‘Thank you for your loving presence Lord, and the powerful work that you are doing on my behalf in the world of the unseen’

That kairos consciousness invites us into living in him through Christ living in us.
There are two delays - one is the delay of detachment from self-consciousness in our soul into our true spirit conscious self - this is what the ‘Healing of the Soul’ course is about, moving from the soul to the spirit - and the second delay is the delay of the eventual manifestation of Gods activity. We can bridge that first delay through faith and grace, but only God is in charge of the second delay of the manifestation of his activity. Paul speaks of having faith for God’s love to fill us and of how that brings the manifestation of God’s extravagant good will into our lives and glorifies His name in the earth.

Ephesians 3:17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Only He who is able to manifest such exceedingly great goodness is in charge of how and when he does that – and we wait in that glorious hope, day by day, and moment to moment. We discussed redeeming the time and I said we could interrupt the clock time but it’s not about snatch and grab if we’ve got a couple of spare moments here and there.

No, it is setting aside time purposefully to practice the renewing of the spirit of the mind and learning to use the new operating system that God has spiritually equipped us with through the Holy Spirit, understanding God’s idea of who we are. And sometimes it can seem like a waste of time but it’s not. Our spirit will rise, as the Bible says They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will rise up with wings as eagles, they will run and not be weayl they will walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31). Teach us Lord to wait.
We can put that into practice exchanging the soul life for the Spirit life, our time into God’s time, his energy into our effort. Amen.

Paul O’Sullivan - pauloss@icloud.com

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WRITTEN IN THE STARS FOR SIGNS AND TIMES
Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.

Ancient Egypt and Babylon were the first civilizations to study the stars, and in Babylon around the time of the birth of Jesus, some wise men called Magi, who were scholars and astronomers noticed something extraordinary in the heavens. For centuries the Magi (where our word magic comes from) had studied the Jewish prophecies passed down during Israel’s captivity in Babylon, and those prophesies included the foretelling of a Messiah. When an unusually bright convergence of planets began to shine as an apparent brilliant star in the eastern sky, they interpreted it as the sign of a great ruler’s birth.
The Bible says that the stars speak forth the knowledge of God, and we see that that includes the birth of Jesus.
Psalm 19:1-4 The heavens declare the glory of God and his splendour is written in the stars. Day after day utters knowledge and the night sky unveils knowledge to us all. Their instruction (qaw - rule) has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. - The life of Jesus, as the Word astonishingly revealed in the heavenly stars.
And God said to Job, ‘Can you lay out Mazzaroth (from Nazar – divine purpose - Strongs Concordance says the 12 signs of the Zodiac- the path or the way) Do you know the ordinances (prescribed arrangement) of the heavens? Can you ordain their authority over the earth? (Job38:32)

The Godly significance of this cannot be ignored or dismissed. But this knowledge was corrupted in ancient times, firstly through idolatry to the Egyptian sun god Ra where calculations of the positions of the stars was used for the building and usage of the pyramids. And the popular use of the zodiac in today’s world is associated with superstition and fortune telling. Counterfeiting is robbery - robbing God of glory for the trickery of man.
But in the Babylonian main temple depictions of the zodiac reveal archaeological findings that the zodiac was associated with the biblical Tower of Babel. indicating that the current naming of the constellations was of Babylonian origin thought to be around 500 years BC – this roughly coincides with Daniel’s ministry to the king during the captivity of Israel and the Bible says that Daniel was ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm(Daniel 1:20). I am only joining Scriptural dots there and inferring the Daniel connection, and there is no solid historical documentation of various other cultures and constellation names.

Remarkably however, the original twelve Babylonian constellations start with the sign of Virgo and end with the sign of Leo. The depiction of Virgo is a sphinx, with the face of a woman and the body of a lion, a clue to the beginning and end points of the life of Jesus, representing the virgin birth and Jesus returning as the Lion of Judah to complete the message of the Gospel - because remarkedly again the 12th zodiac sign is that of Leo the lion. The constellations in between tell the astounding story of the life and ministry of Jesus for humanity. The second sign is Libra, the scales that weigh humanity in the balance after the creation of Adam, followed by Scorpio, denoting the fall of mankind through the attack of darkness upon humanity. We may look at the compelling story of the other constellations more closely at another time. Back to the Christmas story.

The Magi (and the Bible doesn’t say how many) set out on a long journey westward to where this bright star shone. The Gospel of Matthew says In the days of Herod the king, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it arose and have come to worship him (Matthew 2:1).
Their inquiries about the “new king of the Jews” reached the ears of Herod the Great, the local ruler appointed by Rome, and he feared that this child might threaten his dynasty, a potential Messiah heralding a kingdom that could upend his tenuous grip on power. He called in his scribes, demanded answers, and they pointed to the ancient prophecy of Micah, which pinpointed Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah. pretence, Herod craftily met the Magi, urging them to locate the child and report back so he could “worship” him too.
The Wise Men continued following the radiant star, and Matthew writes ‘And when they were come into the house (oikia – family house – there is no mention of a stable in the bible, only a manger – feeding trough), they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him:’ (Matthew 2:11). Inside, the wise men found the child, Jesus, with Mary and Joseph. And they reverently knelt and worshipped him, presenting gifts of profound spiritual significance:
Gold – Godly stewardship of material and entrusted with the spiritual. (Luke 16:11)
Frankincense - prayer and presence and spiritual devotion. (Psalm 141:2)
Myrrh - sharing the sacrificial suffering of Jesus for self and others. (Philippians 3:10).

Warned in a dream by an angel not to return to Herod, the Magi quickly departed, and then the same angel appeared to Joseph, instructing him to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. Herod was furious at being outwitted, and he ordered the massacre of all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two, just as Pharoah ordered the massacre of all male children at the time of the birth of Moses. Pharoah, like Herod feared for his own dynasty, and Moses became the deliverer/saviour of Israel and here Jesus became the deliverer/saviour of the world.
But Herod died soon after, and an angel appeared to Joseph again, instructing him to return to Israel. But learning that Herod’s cruel son, Antipas, ruled Judea, Joseph was wary, and was guided by the angel to lead his family to Nazareth in Galilee.

The journey of the Wise Men is prophetic of the precision of how God’s purposes unfold in our lives also, even in the midst of our own mistakes and frailties and suffering and attacks of darkness. Just as the life of Jesus was written in eternity, God has eternally written the narrative of our lives also. David said in Psalm 139 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! (Psalms 139:16).

God told Abraham that his descendants would be as the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky (Genesis 22:17). The sand represents Israel, of the earth, and the stars represent the Holy Spirit in the lives of multitudes of believers. So just as the witness of the stars was a witness of the life of Jesus, the Bible says that the witness of the brightness of the stars is a witness to the measure of the life of God on display in our lives as well.

Daniel 12:3 Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the expanse of the heavens, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.

1 Corinthians 15:40 There are also heavenly bodies (soma - entities or things) and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star
differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The bodily state of being is sown in decay and raised in immortality, it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.

The Sun is seen symbolically as the Father, and the Moon is seen as Jesus who reflected the light of the sun. The stars are seen as the Holy Spirit within our lives, from one measure of transformation into the likeness of Jesus to the next – from glory to glory.

2 Corinthians 3:18 All of us, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The more we consciously behold Jesus by faith, in our lives here on earth, the more we become transformed to become like him. The way we are told to measure our faith in this life involves how much we know and understand the love of God for us, and how much we live a life of his love to others (1John 3:17-18).
Paul describes the transformation process for our lives.
Ephesians 3:22 put off your old self, which belongs to your former way of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds (repentance), and to put on the New Creation self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This process is one of moving from our old self reality which is based on our idea of who we are to moving to our new creation reality in Christ, which is God’s idea of who we are. We will feel insufficient in ourselves and our own strength as we go through times of trial and suffering, but his loving presence is always with us, and that depends on our faith in God’s idea of who we are not on our idea, or how we feel.
2 Corinthians 4:6-7 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the presence of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; That new mindset of faith in being partakers of the divine nature of God is the good news of the Gospel. And knowing that and believing that is our salvation.
Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

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PRELUDE TO THE INN CROWD

I spoke a couple of weeks ago about how God always steps in at critical times when God’s people are ready to come into a greater fullness of what God has prepared for them from the beginning. Just as he did with setting Israel free from their 400 years of slavery in Egypt. Before Jesus ascended to Heaven he prophesied that in the last days before his second coming that Israel would be hated by all nations.
Matthew 24:5 … you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake (happening now). And then many will be offended and will betray one another, and will hate one another (happening now). Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many (happening now). And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold (happening now). But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations (happening now), and then the end will come.

My prayer is that Australia will be a nation that will not hate Israel. It will mean a wake up call to our nation, which has failed in the last three years in curbing or disciplining the open displays of hatred towards Israel from their historical Middle East persecutors – and in our very own streets of Terra Australis – In 1606 the a Portuguese explorer, Pedro Ferdinand de Queros named the region La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo The Southland of the Holy Spirit - the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit. This may be a time when God is calling the Church to be in prayer for Israel.
I have looked at a couple of Scriptures over the years concerning the land of the South. I don’t have a revelation of this, but I ponder these Scriptures. I always come from a place of believing that nothing is written that does not have significance – I then ask God to reveal any significance in his time and in his way. I’ll submit these two Scriptures for you to look at. Jesus said
Matthew 12:42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation (houtos – this or that) and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.
That of course applies to that generation in the time of Jesus, but it also applies to the last days when Paul said that because of deceitful signs and wonders even the elect might be deceived (2Thessalonians 2:9). As in most cases the word of warnings apply to both Israel and the Church. (1Corinthians 10:11)
Also Zechariah 9:14 Then the LORD will be seen over them, And His arrow will go forth like lightning. The Lord GOD will blow the trumpet,And go with whirlwinds from the south. The LORD of hosts will defend them;
And today, we find ourselves in a similar season of crisis in the earth when global darkness has never been darker upon a world of uncertainty, division, and spiritual disconnection. But in these times of empty-but-full silence, God speaks Suddenly - God’s people wait with hope as God is stirring the hearts of His people to hear his voice, knowing that God is never silent without purpose. Our silence can also be purposeful, and our waiting is with hope and faith that God is at work in reordering all things.
God waits to speak.
Isaiah 30:18 Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you

THE INN CROWD
Caesar Augustus as the emperor of Rome decreed that a census be held so that everyone in the empire could be taxed according to their property ownership and other possessions. They all had to go to their place of birth to be registered so Joseph who was of the house and lineage of King David had to take Mary to Bethlehem, to his family home. The Scriptures had prophesied that the true King of Peace would be born in Bethlehem at that very time, in a small village nearly five thousand miles distance from the palace of Caesar Augustus in Rome. And we read the amazing prophecy of Micah, over seven hundred years earlier that declared that Bethlehem would be the place of the birth of Jesus.

Micah 5:2. O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!” God will allow his people to become subject to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last these fellow countrymen—the exile remnants of Israel—will rejoin their nation in their own land. And he (The Son) shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall remain there safely, for he will be greatly honoured all around the world. He will be our Peace.

Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven-hundred-year-old prophesy of his birthplace, and becoming the King of Peace.
Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary, and the journey was tiresome for Mary, and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season, and they did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place where the animals slept and fed.
Joseph saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could. Then Mary gave birth to her child, and a baby cried its baby cry as it entered the world. Father’s joy in heaven would be echoed by Joseph in the earth, and he would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father.
On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, being celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom have scarce idea of what is really being celebrated.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star reached its zenith and was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them, and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the Newborn King of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” The angelic song about this new creation in the world was the magnificent sequel to the angels’ song of the first creation of the world as we read in the book of Job after God challenges Job and says ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined, and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? (Job 38:4,7,8).

When the angels’ singing had stopped, the shepherds were guided to the place where this extraordinary event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross that would come one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be released into the earth with the power to overcome darkness in every single life of faith.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. Jesus had declared this mystery of the human/ Divine intersection of life and being when he prayed to the Father in front of the disciples “I have given them the glory you gave me—the glorious unity of being one, as we are— I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one—so that the world will know you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me. (John 17:22)
This Divine intersection of our being with God is how we get to ‘know God’. The Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person.
1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need to learn another person’s personal perception of God to know what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true.
This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need in any given situation and at any given time. That is what Jesus accomplished for us. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith.
Christmas waits to be truly celebrated within this understanding. We need to understand the story of the human beginning of Jesus. We also need to know the story of his redeeming work in the earth and we need to knowthe story of his death and resurrection, in order to know him and love him and serve him and become one with him forever. Amen.

Paul O’Sullivan - pauloss@icloud.com

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A PREGNANT SILENCE
Many times, God has spoken after long periods of silence. There were 400 years of silence after the prophet Malachi spoke in the last book of the Old Testament, and then John the Baptist and Jesus were supernaturally born into the earth. there were also 400 years of silence during the time of Israel’s slavery in Egypt under Pharoah until God spoke to Moses to set his people free and prepare to journey into the promised land. The number 400 in the Bible speaks of these seasons of Pregnant Silence, which can be described as a time of silence when all communication is suspended and that time feels both empty and yet strangely full, filled with anticipation that something important is about to be spoken or revealed.

For about four thousand years after Adam when Jesus was born the earth had suffered under the weight of its brokenness. Humanity was lost, unable to heal itself. Suspicion and hostility toward Father God, sown by Lucifer, had led to a distorted view of God in the earth, and many saw Him as distant and judgmental, and even Judaism opposed itself from within through doctrines of legalism and hypocrisy and pride. This distancing of Israel from the love and grace of God caused Jesus to tell them at that time that they had ‘missed their day of visitation’ (Luk 19:44).
Galilee of the Gentiles was the battlefield of good against evil and of light against darkness, as Isaiah had prophesied concerning the birth of Jesus as the light out of darkness and the new birth of life out of death.
In Galilee of the Gentiles the people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light.
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. (Isaiah 9:1-2.
God had a greater answer—not a set of rituals or rules, but Himself. Jesus, as God and man, would bridge the gap between heaven and earth. He would step out of eternity and into time, exchanging pure Spirit existence for divine/human existence as the first New Creation Being in the earth. In this great mission, the Holy Spirit played an essential role. The Holy Spirit partnered with Jesus, sharing every moment of His earthly life. This partnership ensured that the Holy Spirit too would intimately experience human existence. After Jesus completed His mission, the Holy Spirit would continue the work of revealing God’s love - and drawing humanity into communion with the Divine so that we too could become a New Creation in Christ.

To begin this new chapter, God sent a divine Spiritual seed into the earth, choosing Mary, a young and humble woman, to receive it. The angel Gabriel appeared to her, announcing that she had been chosen to become pregnant and bear the God-child Jesus, and he reassured her that this was God’s will. Although Mary was initially confused, having never been with a man, Gabriel explained that the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and she would conceive a child by divine power, and Mary, in faith and humility, responded, “Let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Mary was betrothed to a man called Joseph and in the cultural context of Mary and Joseph, betrothal was a formal, legal agreement between families, often formalized with a written contract (ketubah) and the couple was considered legally married, but if there was a breach of honour to that contract, either party could initiate divorce proceedings.

When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant with child, he was deeply troubled, but he resolved to act with compassion, planning to quietly divorce her (Matthew 1:19). However, the angel Gabrielle also appeared to him in a dream, telling him that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would save His people from their sins. Joseph obeyed the angel’s command, and he took Mary as his wife.

Six months earlier a priestly prophet named Zechariah was told by the same angel Gabrielle that his wife Elizabeth who was beyond the age of childbearing, would also supernaturally give birth to a child and the child would be called John.
Luke 1:17-20 … a child who would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.
However, Zechariah could not believe this, so the angel said I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.
This was another supernatural pregnancy and from this moment a supernatural pregnant silence occurred as the priestly prophet was struck dumb until the pregnancy was over and the baby John was born. Zecharia the priestly prophet being struck mute for a season of time was symbolic of Israel, who had not heard a prophetic voice since the prophecy of Malachi, the last prophet to speak until both John the Baptist and Jesus came to proclaim the supernatural birth of the Kingdom of God in the earth.

Following Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah and Mary and Joseph, Mary journeyed to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who had been with child for six months, the baby John, who would prepare the way for Jesus. And the baby leaped in Elizabeth’s womb as the two sisters shared the wonder of their supernatural pregnancies. Elizabeth finally gave birth to her son, and it was assumed the child would be named Zechariah, after his father. However, Elizabeth insisted he be named John, and when questioned, Zechariah, who had been struck mute for doubting Gabriel’s prophecy, wrote the name John on a clay tablet and immediately, his voice returned, and he praised God. The silence was broken for all the world to hear God and have his presence amongst them. When John the Baptist began his ministry of preparing the way for Jesus, many in Israel believed that he was Elijah whom Malachi had prophesied about.
The final words of Malachi’s prophesy came from the last verse of the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament, and they declared that God would send the prophet Elijah before the coming of the Messiah and that he would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to their children.
and even Jesus said that John had come in the spirit of Elijah - This is the one about whom it is written: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. (Matthew 11)

And today, we find ourselves in a similar season of pregnant silence from Heaven upon a world that is rife with uncertainty, division, and spiritual disconnection. Many voices in this global culture clamour for attention yet rarely do they bring clarity or wisdom. But in the midst of this time of empty-but-full silence, God’s people wait with expectant hope as God is stirring the hearts of His people to hear his voice and to awaken others and turn their hearts back to him. Just as John’s mission was to prepare the way for Jesus, the Holy Spirit is working in us who believe, to bring light and hope to the world.

This preparation doesn’t rely on loud proclamations or dramatic gestures but on God’s people hearing his voice and responding with consistent acts of love and faith as he moves through our everyday lives inspiring us to reflect God’s mercy and truth in our daily interactions.
Zechariah’s regained voice reminds us that God’s word always comes at the appointed time. As we await a fresh movement of the Spirit, we can take comfort in knowing that God is never silent without purpose. Our silence can also be purposeful, and our waiting can be with hope and faith that God is at work in the world of the unseen on our behalf. The Bible says
Whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. (1John 5:4)
We wait in silence, but that silence is pregnant with the faith of bringing to birth God’s will in our lives and in the Church. When His voice breaks through, it will be with clarity, cutting through the confusion of the world. We wait to hear and God waits to speak.
Isaiah 30:18 Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you;

Malachi prophesied before the 400 years of silence that God would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to their children before his return – in the days his first coming to Israel - and in the days of his second coming into the world. Today this means that there will be a grace upon families that will become reunited in the love of God and one another. This promise remains true for us today. In the midst of the darkness of today’s world of chaos, the light of God’s love is beginning to shine. As we choose to live in that love and its light, we will witness the hand of God bringing order out of chaos and bringing unity, hope, and peace to people in our own personal world. Amen

Paul O’Sullivan – pauloss@me.com

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THE BATTLE IS NOT YOURS BUT GOD'S

The Bible gives the account of God speaking to King Jehoshaphat, who was a faithful king – the fourth king of Judah, and he was about to go into battle against the enemy, which was an ungodly alliance (I’m using that term from time to time today) of the armies of Ammon and Moab and Mt.Seir. 2Chronicles 20:17. You will not need to fight in this battle for the battle is not yours, but God's. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you.”

In that battle of Jehoshaphat’s, that army was about to attack Israel to prevent them from entering into their inheritance of the promised Land. Earlier on, Israel were told not to attack these three nations when they first came out of Egypt. However God always steps in at critical times when God’s people are ready to come into the fullness of what God has prepared for them from the beginning. The people of Israel were in fear and terror and Jehoshaphat cried out to God ‘O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

The Bible goes on to say ‘And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush (âra? - to lie in wait and destroy) against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were destroyed. God set the divided kingdoms of the enemy against one another (ungodly alliances turn against one another).
For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, and destroyed them first, and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.’
So by the time Israel appeared on the scene ready for battle there were dead bodies everywhere and the fight was all over, and it took Israel three days to gather up all the spoil from the treasuries of the opposing armies.
I believe we are living in a time such as this for the Church as the rebellion of ungodly alliances of darkness against the light of God’s people has also begun to reach its peak.
In ancient times, and up to the time of Jesus people worshipped a multitude of different gods and therefore could never agree on anything. There were no athiests. Today there are atheists but people have invented their own gods, or their own images or ideologies of what they believe will give them everything they want in life.

Over the last decade or more a cultural slogan called DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion has become a rule for social and sometimes educational and political and corporate life. If done in a godly way this slogan has a lot of merit, as diversity is an accepted fact of life, and equity means an appropriate sharing of privilege (it doesn’t mean equality), and inclusion means inclusion. Nothing wrong with that.
But when done in an ungodly selfish way, individuals or groups of people compete to be more diverse or different than anything ever seen or heard of before and demand to be applauded for their choices it can put a strain on the fragile cultural window of tolerance and confusion and resentment starts happening everywhere. Equity then becomes I/we want to be more equal than most other people and want to enjoy every privilege that other people have without responsibly earning or paying for or deserving.

The ungodly nature of the DEI slogan is because it was based on an unspoken agreement in our culture to reject traditional Western values of Christianity which stood for a creator God with authority over human affairs through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Traditional values such as family order, freedom of speech, and obedience to the Commandments have been despised and rejected. This has caused ungodly alliances to form, and become set against one another, just as with King Jehosophat where God set the divided kingdoms of the enemy against one another (ungodly alliances turn against one another). DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion then devolves over a short time into division, inequity, and exclusion (DIE). Identity groups compete for priority of privilege and within what looked like a united front of many identity groups fragments into different splinter groups cancelling one other out and leaving more conflict and hostility in society than there was in the first place.
We might think that what is happening today is something new, but it isn’t, as we have seen with King Jehoshaphat, and Paul sums up the rebellious attitude of today’s culture when he wrote over two thousand years ago in Romans.
Romans 1:19-28 (Message Bible)
By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what normal eyesight can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap statuettes you can buy at any roadside stall.
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us.
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless.
Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives and they ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

The basis for Christian unity, a Godly Alliance, is found in Ephesians 4:1 walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
Paul sums up the Church’s confidence in our unity of trust in God’s power on our behalf.
1 Corinthians 8:4 we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. However, there is not in everyone that knowledge;

Israel did physical warfare – we do spiritual warfare. We can receive peace from God, knowing that he alone can subdue all things to himself (Philippians 3.x) including the hearts of people, and that he is the creator God who alone can bring order out of chaos, and who speaks light into darkness. And as Paul explains in Ephesians 6:10 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the times of evil, and having done all, to stand. We do not fight against people but against dark spirits called principalities, which are social demographic regions where the culture of states and cities is expressed. We also wrestle against powers that buffet our personal souls. We wrestle against the rulers of the darkness of this age, that means the darkness that is influencing the collective mindsets and ideologies and attitudes of the global atmosphere that exists in this time of worldwide crisis.

Paul writes about our strategic spiritual defensive pieces of armour such as a ‘helmet of salvation’ protecting the mind and thoughts, and he talks about a spiritual breastplate over the heart that protects us from fear. The head and the heart are the two most vulnerable parts of the body in warfare, and in spiritual terms the mind is the stronghold to where darkness directs his primary attack. We are directed in the Scriptures to bring our thoughts captive to the present moment that contains the ever-present presence of God with us through the indwelling Holy Spirit who reveals the reality of the power of Jesus to reorder our lives.This is being renewed in the spirit of our minds. We magnify the reality of God’s supernatural activity above the unreality of our anxious imaginations about everything that might go wrong.

The other vulnerable area is our heart. That is where either fear or faith can dwell. Darkness fires darts of doubt and fear into this stronghold of our relationship with God, and we are given a shield of faith to protect ourselves from this kind of attack. The very areas that satan seeks to attack you are the areas of your strength as you enter this new season - and because you have paid a price and kept going, God is giving you access to the next step in your destiny - a short climb to the next place of rest and refreshment, where God will bring healing to the wounds the enemy may have inflicted you with.
Paul also mentions spiritual weapons, like the sword, which speaks of the word of God.

The people under Jehoshaphat were told to ‘Position yourselves, stand still, and see, and to fear not.’ We Position ourselves – Our position is as partners together with God. We are partakers of his Divine nature - Joint Heirs together with Jesus. We do not earn this – it is a gift of God’s grace. But we dare not neglect it.
We stand still – We come into a place of readiness and alertness in our spirit, not passively but actively - mindful of the now moment of God’s ever-present presence with us. We See - That is seeing God at work by faith in the world of the unseen, as opposed to seeing things happen the way Israel did at the ambushing of the enemies in Jehoshaphat’s battle. Our outward ‘seing’ will come if we have been inwardly ‘seeing’ by faith. That lifts us into a present moment assurance of the greatness and goodness of God, and we magnify God’s greatness above our own weakness – ‘For The Lord your God is with you’. Amen

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PRESENCE PRAYER AND MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness can be described as the practice of paying attention, with an intention, and in the present moment. So mindfulness is a key aspect of Presence Prayer.
God Is mindful towards us and that is where the original concept of mindfulness came from.
Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him (mnaomai), or the son of man, that you care for him? This Scripture is quoting David in Psalm 8:4-6 and is speaking of the Father being mindful of Jesus but it is ultimately speaking of God being mindful of all of humanity.

People in our Western culture use mindfulness as a practice for sharpening their focus of attention in the present moment for doing productive things or for engaging in leisure or creative skills, and also as a form of emotional therapy for staying calm in times of stress. It has generally become a psychological discipline that is useful for finding some order in a busy and agitated world. That is well and good and helpful, but it does not reach the highest goal of conscious mindfulness that God has prepared for us.
Our mindfulness of God does more than just help us to pay attention to the inner space of what is meaningful in our life, it puts us in touch with the source of all meaning in our life, God himself. David also wrote of God’s initiative in this mindfulness.
How precious are your thoughts (rêa – intentions, purposes) towards me, O God! How great is the sum of them! (Psalm139:17)

It was God who invented the practice of mindfulness and we can see that he is focussing his full attention upon us with an intention of seeing us becoming the person we were created to be from eternity, and in the eternal now present moment. And he wants us to get to know him and also to know that we are known by him – so it is a two-way thing - God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. When we complete the loving circle of mindfulness back to God it delights his heart, which yearns for that intimate connection (James 4:5 - The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation for us. (Romans 12:2 - being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed is more than just our behaviour - it is the consciousness of who we really are in union with God through Jesus. When this consciousness is front and centre in our mind we become actively guided by his attentive gaze, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye. (Psalm 32:8). We also read in Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the thoughts I have towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’

God wants us to know that we are known. God wants to help us locate our known self within himself – and that is our inner source of power and love- the treasure in the earthen vessel. That is the wellspring, the fountain of living water. We can’t find it on our own, we are taken there by the Holy Spirit.
John 16:14 he takes of what Jesus has said and of who Jesus is and reveals it to us.

He takes us on this journey of mindful focus and intention. The Holy Spirit hears the cry of our heart which says; I want to know someone who really knows me and can help me find who I really am and who understands how I feel so that I can be who I really should be. That is powerful – and that is why David exclaimed ‘What IS man that you are mindful of him – are you that interested and focussed in me? – in us?
Our life as part of the human race, created to be part of God’s family is about knowing God and becoming KNOWN! – Known of God; Galatians 4.9. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world?

When a person really feels heard they are tremendously grateful. They feel like saying – ‘how wonderful to know that someone is beginning to understand what it is like to be me’. And God says; ‘how wonderful that someone is beginning to want to know me and to be KNOWN by me’. And he then says My presence will go with you and I will give you rest, for you have found grace in my sight and I know you by name. (Exodus 33:14) and also Behold, I have written your name on the palms of my hands; (Isaiah 49:16).
We have to know we are being heard by a merciful God without being judged, condemned, or rejected for imperfect performance. This is because he knows we are serious about knowing Him. When we begin to understand this and believe this that we are known like this we enter into the healing light of his lovingkindness where our darkness can be conquered. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you to me.’ (Jeremiah 31:3)

We develop in the growth of mindfulness with God through the challenges of life. We each have different personal situations to contend with; relational, financial, self-worth, and general fears and anxieties. But the greatest challenge is not what the actual external situation is but the fear on the inside that needs to be faced and met with faith. Our state of mindful faith in these situations determines the quality of peace and stability in our personal lives. Otherwise, life becomes a series of reactions because we are not in that settled place of mindful faith within ourselves and this affects the quality of our wisdom in decision making and the ability to recover from the consequences of our mistakes and from the mishaps that happen unexpectedly. ‘be anxious for nothing, but talk to me about what your needs are, with hope and thanksgiving in your heart. And the peace of God which surpasses understanding will guard your hearts and minds…’ Philippians 4:6

When we are flowing in mindfulness with God we can not only find a place of peace within ourselves but a place of empowered faith in God that makes us more aware of his compassion for the pain and suffering for others that we know, so that we can touch his compassion and be more effective in providing help and care and prayer. In this way we can come together in many places as groups and gatherings of faith and love and care, being mindful of one another that we are all going through different things at different times at different levels, and being aware of a ‘faith safety net’ of common goodwill and care in the group. In this year of my own grief and loss and other difficulties I have felt that safety net of your intercessory prayer for me in this way.

In the Book of Joshua when Joshua prepared to take Isreal across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land, he told the company of twelve priests (representing the twelve tribes) to carry the ark upon their shoulders across the flooding river (Joshua 3:8 – shoulders speak of representative authority and bearing burdens). The ark contained the presence of God, and the people were to follow this company at a distance of 2000 cubits. The priests were commanded to stand at the edge of the Jordan River and God said he would do a great miracle and drive out all their enemies before them. The people were told ‘When the priests who are carrying the Ark touch the water with their feet, the river will stop flowing as though held back by a dam and will pile up as though against an invisible wall all the way back to Adam!’ This was the work of God, not the work of the priests; all they had to do was to carry the ark, the presence of God, but they had to have faith that God would do the mighty miracle work in the world of the unseen. Their natural minds would have said ‘We are going to drown in there’, but they would have had no doubt that they were bearing the presence of God on behalf of all the people.

Then all the people crossed at a spot where the river was close to the city of Jericho, and the priests who were carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan and waited as all the people passed by.
The people would never have entered into the Promised Land or entered into a new life under God where they could give thanks to have his spiritual blessings and his provision of fields and crops and houses. They had become used to struggling and straggling in the wilderness without hope or confidence – and now their time had come. But it required that the priests stood in the gap. Those priests who were 2000 cubits in front of the rest were a prophetic picture of Jesus as our High Priest overcoming darkness and death for us almost 2000 years ago on the cross so that we could enter into the fulness of the Promise of God in Jesus and could be included in his life, and his baptism in the Jordan river was a picture of his death and resurrection

Today we can be like those priests that stand in the gap for others, carrying the presence of God in our hearts for his supernatural working in the world of the unseen not only in our lives, but also in the challenging situations of those people in our world that we stand in the gap for. Everything about this battle is about celebrating victory rather than fearfully anticipating the dreadful sense of failure or helplessness – no, we expect the supportive and authoritative burden carrying power that God has given to each one of us, as Paul wrote in Galatians 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. So enter into the simplicity of this, it not complicated, and don’t expect to have to have some ecstatic feeling or experience of the presence of God – no it is by faith. You’ve heard all the Scriptures today, look them up. Know that this is the purposeful intention of God and know that he gave those priests a commandment to carry his presence for themselves and for the other people. At these times you may not feel very confident but you don’t need to have confidence in your own strength – it’s not you, it is simply knowing that God has placed the burden and the authority upon your shoulders but he is doing the supernatural work in his way and in his time, and we just give God thanks that he has included us in his loving mighty work. Thankyou Lord for this privilege, Amen.

Paul OSullivan – pauloss@me.com

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SCOTT KARDASH AT NBCC

Working with Paul over the last few years has been a real privilege for me, a real pleasure. And as you know, a lot of you have been with Paul for many, many years. And it's very rare to find somebody with a depth of wisdom and understanding of the Scriptures that Paul has. He has a real detailed recall and is able to connect dots across Scriptures in a way that I've never seen anyone else do it.

Paul approached me and said, you know, we were talking about just other things. And he said, "Oh, well, you'd really like to get something going with some podcasts to get some of these messaging out." I said, "Oh, yeah, I'd love to help you." And so we've put out two series to date, hopefully many more to come: Our Ten Commandments and The Healing of the Soul and the Life-Giving Spirit. And so today I wanted to put some of that in context. Actually, they are related. It's all on a very similar theme. And the theme is all around the Spirit who heals us and reshapes us.

But before I do, I might just mention briefly that for those that don't know, I did speak to Paul during the week. And he's recovering well from the operation. I think he's been home for a few days now. On Friday, he got home. And so he said things could be going as well as could be expected. That's really good news. I have a lot of faith for Paul's situation. I know we're all praying for him.

An Ancient Look at the Ten CommandmentsIn preparation for this, I did listen to Peter Carblis last week. You all here for that? Did you all hear Peter Carblis? I was very impressed with his ancient Greek. So I decided to one-up him and use an ancient manuscript. He used like modern Greek. He had lowercase. There's no lowercase of the original manuscripts. And I also decided to go for the Hebrew, not the Greek. So this is even older than the manuscripts he was relying on.

Now, would anybody like to give it a crack? Because I can't read it. No? Does anybody know what that might be? No. I didn't know either. I had to look it up. So it's the Ten Commandments. And this is probably the earliest manuscript we have of the Ten Commandments. And it was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And you can see they've got a numbering system, which is a bit mysterious until you realise that it's quite simple. 4, Q, 4, 1. 4 is the cave they found this scroll in. Q means Qumran, which is where the caves were. And 41 was the number that they registered the scroll. So there's nothing magical about the 41. It's just the one. They got two in that sequence.

And you can see that with these ancient manuscripts, they're actually quite different to the modern languages that we have. There's no punctuation. They have the same in the Greek. There's no punctuation. There are no spaces between words. They all run together. There's no chapters or verses. There's no vowels or accents. They call it the Tetragrammaton, which is Yahweh. It's always written out in full. In the New Testament, they contracted Jesus Christ, and they put a line above it. But in our Bibles, the Yahweh is always written as capital L-O-R-D, Lord. So in the Old Testament, you'll see where it's written Lord, capital letters, it's in the original, it's Yahweh. And they had very strict rules about how they created these scrolls, parchment and kosher animals. And of course, in Hebrew, it's right to left, not left to right. If you start on left and try to go to the right, you'd be in real trouble.

But maybe it's better that we deal with the English today. I know I find this a lot easier. The Old Testament law, and God was forming a new nation. And so they needed a set of commandments. And it was part of a covenant that God had with this new nation. He formed them out of nothing. This nation didn't exist. It was a miracle, really, where God spoke to Abraham. And from Abraham, he said, "I will bless through you all the families of the earth, all the nations."

He started with these commandments. He wrote them. He wrote them on two tablets of stone. He wrote them with his finger and gave them to Moses. Remember what happened then? Moses came down the mountain. And what were the Israelites doing? They were already rebellious and worshipping a calf that they'd made out of the gold. And so what Moses did, he smashed the Ten Commandments. They had to go back up and get a new set. The fact that they're on tablets of stone is quite important because where is the law written now? On our hearts.

And Jesus came to fulfill that. He came to fulfill the law. And he helped us understand that there are two commandments that actually summarize everything. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour. And then he said, "On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." That's a phrase which actually means the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. He wasn't just talking about the Ten Commandments, he was talking about the entirety of the Scriptures. And in the New Testament, when you see the word Scriptures, it's referring to what we now call the Old Testament. So they're referring to the Old Testament. They were always talking about the Old Testament when they talked about Scriptures. And Jesus came to fulfill everything in that Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Purpose of the LawSo there's a purpose to the law, and the purpose is still around today. So you can see since the law comes, it produces a knowledge of sin. Have you seen those YouTube videos of Ray Comfort running around and interviewing? Has anybody seen him? And he convicts people through the law. He says, "Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Even something small?" And he's using the Ten Commandments because most people think they're good people. And they need to have something which exposes sin and to make them realize they need a Savior.

Paul tells us later on in Galatians, the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

And then Paul again says,

But God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin and the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So there's an uplifting of the law, and that's what Jesus came to do.

From the Law of Stone to the Law of the SpiritAnd then Jesus ascended. It always surprises me that the disciples spend their time in the Holy Spirit, and they walk in the Holy Spirit. They spend all this time with Jesus face to face, had no clue who he really was for most of that time. And even when he died, they all went back to fishing and they thought, what was that all about? And it wasn't until they saw him resurrected that they realized actually who he is and he's still alive today.

Jesus did ascend and there was a prophecy in Joel, which was fulfilled in Acts.

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh...

And I will give you a new heart. This is Ezekiel now.

And a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and to be careful to obey my rules.

We're seeing a transition here from outer to inner. And then this is a key passage here, and Paul actually talks about this a lot in the healing of the soul.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father. And he will give you another helper.

Who's the helper? The Holy Spirit.

...to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

And the disciples, they were terrified that Jesus is going to ascend and leave them all alone again. "No, no, no. Go back to Jerusalem and wait and I will send the Holy Spirit."

And then one of the most startling verses I think in the Bible,

...he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

For me, that's amazing that we are joined with our Creator through the Spirit and through our spirit, actually.

The Spirit of the Law: A New PerspectiveSo that now opens up a whole different view of the Ten Commandments. And this is where Paul has really made some interesting insights. And you can see the letter of the law is phrased in a very negative, "thou shalt not." Most of it's negative, but the spirit of the law in the New Testament enhancement of that is rephrased and uplifted in positive terms.

Take a few examples, "don't murder." The New Testament spirit of the law really is to say, is addressing the root of anger and unforgiveness to become an agent of reconciliation and peace. We're moved from avoiding murder to fostering life. And you see that the whole thing is flipped on its head.

Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labour, that he might have something to give.

So we're moving from a taker to a productive giver.

"Don't tell lies, don't bear false witness." Speaking words of life that fill others' hearts. Not just avoiding literal falsehoods. So we're moving from avoiding deception to speaking truth in love. So can you see this transformation?

The other thing Paul has noticed is that each of these commandments are linked. They're not just a laundry list of commands. One actually leads to the other, and ten actually goes back to one. But if you go the other way, you have a diagnostic tool. So say you're having a problem with honouring your parents. You go back one, and it will help you. And there's probably an issue there that's resulting in a symptom in the next one. I won't go into any more depth than that. If you'd like to find out more, go to YouTube and just search on "uncreated ten commandments." And there's a playlist there of all of them. It goes into much more detail there.

Sanctification: The Process of Being RenewedNow, we're moving to a Greek text. Can anyone read this? I'm not even sure whether Pete can, but that's all right. Well, I was going to whisper to Carlos when you need him. He would love to get into this. I bet he'd struggle with this one, mate. This is actually Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 23 to 24.

The truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.

The new self is created in the likeness of God. Does anybody know what process this is describing? Think of justification, sanctification, glorification. This one here is a process, so justification, glorification, less of a process. This is talking about sanctification. That's the technical word for it.

Our Threefold Salvation: Spirit, Soul, and BodyThere's a number of scriptures which talk about that. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because you will have heard Paul talk about, the three stages of being saved. In the past, our spirit has been saved—this is our justification. We can look at it this way with the spirit. And the soul is being saved, or sanctified. This is the process, which is a lifelong transformation process. And in the future, our bodies will be saved, or glorified.

Very tempting for us to separate these into three discrete entities, body, soul, and spirit. But in reality, that's very Greek thinking. Greeks used to like to separate everything into their parts. Hebrews liked to keep everything together as one entity, and they looked at different aspects of that one body.

This is a key verse that Paul has really lent on heavily for the healing of the soul. And it provides a lot of meaning around sanctification.

For you're receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation, or healing, of your soul.

So, the Greek word for salvation can be translated as healing. Most of our modern Bibles just call it salvation. But some of the earlier English Bibles really did translate it as healing or health. That's 1 Peter 1.9. But in reality, we are one person. And so, we have three aspects that work together to keep us whole.

How Spirit, Soul, and Body Work Together (Clip 1 with Paul O'Sullivan)And so, I just wanted to now move on to having Paul tell us a little bit more about this. To answer the question, how do our spirit, soul, and body work together to shape our lives?

Paul O'Sullivan: Well, we've spoken about the spirit, and the soul, and the body. And there's three parts there. So, our whole being is tripartite, if you like, Paul. And it's interesting that God is a trinity, a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three in one making unity. And you said that the soul is both part of our inner life and part of our outer life. So, could you illustrate how the spirit, soul, and body work in harmony to shape our lives?

Well, if you draw three concentric circles, and you can see the diagram there, we can see that the body in the outer circle sends information to our souls from the outer circle of our outer world. There's a world out there, a sense world, a material world. And our spirit sends information from the innermost circle of our spirit into our souls. And our spirit is made up of our heart and our mind. So, there you've got parts. And there are divisions of working parts all working together. That's functional, but it's a design.

And all of that information from the spirit coming in from the deeper parts of the spirit and then coming outwards from the body inwards to the soul can be either helpful or harmful, whatever direction, whether it's coming from the spirit or coming out from the body. It can be good information or bad information. I mean, good things can come from the outside. Bad things can come too from what the body experiences and sees and feels. There can be traumas, all kinds of things.

And our spirit also sends information from the innermost circle on that diagram. And as I said, that's made up of the heart and the mind. And so the information from the spirit and from the body can be helpful or harmful, good or bad, true or false. And that can have a damaging effect upon the soul, that expresses everything that it receives from the body and the spirit. It doesn't say, "Oh, look, I'll just decide to accept certain types of information." What it can do is after it has received certain types of information that it realizes it doesn't like, it can learn a lesson and say, "I don't want to receive that anymore." But at first, if you're a young child, you're not discernible. You're not understanding what authority that information's coming from. I mean, that's just the way things are. We need to know that. There's naivety and vulnerability.

Scott Kardash: Well, Paul, you're moving into an area now that we need to elaborate on quite a lot in the upcoming episodes because we've laid out a foundation, I think, for the series in this particular session. We talked about the different parts of the body, how they interact and how they function together as an overall person. But we're going to start to unravel this now and talk about the healing of the soul, aren't we? So we're going to drill into this in quite a bit of detail because it's important for people to understand. And there's going to be little keys to unlocking different applications within people's lives that I don't think they would have even realized were there. They didn't even realize there was a lock there to unlock. And I think that's where a lot of the value of this series is going to come.

Paul O'Sullivan: Yeah, that's good, Scott. Yeah. And we're going to go right back to the beginning, the beginning of humanity, creation.

Scott Kardash: Excellent. Yeah, thanks, Scott.

Through my interactions with Paul, there are many things that I've disagreed with him on, actually. I know it doesn't come through in the podcast, but after spending time with him, I've realized he's right on just about everything. And some of them are quite big things, you know. Well, one of them was this. And I think there's a lot of confusion. Many people may not agree with this. He said, "Our spirit is made up of our heart and mind." So the heart and mind are in the spirit. Actually, I thought it was in the soul. So I was a bit confused about that.

A Profound Question: Who Forms the Soul? (Clip 2 with Paul O'Sullivan)The answer to that question relates to the answer to this question. Who created our body, spirit, and soul? Quite a profound question. And this is one of the keys that Paul's unlocked as part of this series. And again, I'm just going to play some of that to look at the answer to that question.

Paul O'Sullivan: Okay, remember, we're body, soul, and spirit.

...God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

A Hebrew word there, ruach, the spirit of life. So Adam has an inner spiritual life now. He'd already become an outer physical body. He had two God-created parts. As we all do. But then it goes on to say in that verse, and this is the pivotal turning point,

...and man became a living soul.

That's the third part. The astonishing statement made here is not that God instantly created a living soul like he did with the body and the spirit. It says man became a living soul. So that begs a question. If God didn't form that living soul and man became a living soul, then who forms the living soul?

Scott Kardash: All right, Paul. So this is a concept which was a bit of a revelation here. So would you say that this understanding sparked this series?

Paul O'Sullivan: Yeah, that was the trigger. The startling question of who formed the soul. Because we'veseen God create man in his spirit and body, and suddenly the body and spirit become something. They became something, a living soul.

So the startling conclusion that I've come to, I'll put it to you now, we'll look at it in the scripture, is that the first living human soul was ready to be formed by the created spirit and body of man himself. So man formed the human soul from the God-created body and spirit that it already had. So we're going to look at that scripture a little more closely. I want to say here that God made provision for that soul. That's part of his creation for us. But he left it to us to form its nature.

First of all, the human spirit is breathed into the body by God. Then the soul and its inner life is formed throughout each person's life out of the activity of the two God-created parts. The inner part, the spirit. The outer part, the body. We form or generate our own souls. That's what I'm saying.

Scott Kardash: Alright, and it says that in Genesis.

Paul O'Sullivan: Well, all it says in Genesis is that man became a living soul. Now I've pondered that. What does that word became mean? It does not state God created. It said man became. So where does the Bible say that we are forming or generating the soul?

Well, that's another journey. I had to start searching for that and in the New Testament I found the place where Paul, writing in Corinthians, describes what it means to become a living soul. He knew about this. The same English word, became, that's used in Genesis in Hebrew. That's the English word. And that was a breakthrough. I was looking for something that humanity could generate and perhaps have a responsibility for, like a stakeholder with accountability. The formation of character within us and how the soul operates and how we participate in that. And that was all in that scripture that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15, 45, where he says,

So it is written, The first man, Adam, became a living soul.

And Paul is using the same English word that's used in Genesis. Same English word, right? But Paul, who was a Greek and Hebrew scholar, knew the deeper meaning of that Hebrew word became. He uses a Greek word in the New Testament. And the Greek word is which means "to generate." Now that's not apparent in the Old Testament, became. But here it is in the New Testament. To generate, to cause to be, to become, to come into being, to have a self. It's all there. You can read it in the concordance.

So humanity generated a living soul. And that scripture is pointedly clear. Man became a living soul. It has to come into being and become the responsibility of the person who generates that soul over the period of a lifetime. So God is not forming or generating the nature of that soul. We are. There is something waiting to become the expression of our spirit and our body. The angels didn't have one. The soul didn't exist. God designed the means whereby the living spirit and the body of man could generate a soul for the first time ever. And our whole life is the expression of that becoming of a living soul.

Scott Kardash: So God designed humanity to have a soul and he gives us the responsibility to form and shape that soul with all the decisions and choices we make in life, both the good and the bad, Paul.

Paul O'Sullivan: Exactly.

That's profound. And I hope you all caught that because I don't know anybody else who's noticed that in the scripture. I've heard nobody else teach about the soul that way. And I think he's absolutely spot on. And that opened up a whole set of discoveries all based on the scriptures about how our souls get damaged and how healing can occur within the souls.

And if you want to know more, just go to YouTube and there's a whole series on there. The channel is called Uncreated and the series is Healing of the Soul and the Life-Giving Spirit. It goes into much more depth later on about helper parts and how these helper parts are created in our souls and originally for good reasons, but we carry them throughout life and their purpose is no longer serving us anymore. In fact, it can be detrimental to us. Paul talks about how that can happen.

Summary: Salvation as HealingSo just to summarize, salvation can be translated as healing.

You're receiving the end result of your faith. The salvation or healing of your souls.

Our soul is shaped by choices and experiences. In a fallen world, our soul becomes damaged and disordered. It needs healing and renewal.

The Holy Spirit is our healer. Salvation is not just a one-time event. It's an ongoing, effective process.

We all are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Salvation is the process of being reshaped into the perfect image of God, the risen Christ. We are being saved. Sometimes we might look back and say, "I was saved on that date." Well, you probably realized on that date you were justified, but we are being saved. More than rescue from sin, it's healing, transformation, union with God.

It is to be conformed to the image of His Son,

...to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

And the ultimate goal is to restore us to the purpose for which we were created, full communion with God,

...that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us.

That's our ultimate objective.

Application: Presence PrayerAnd then how do we apply these principles? Well, you would have heard Paul talking about presence prayer. So he's done a couple of weeks here, I think, on presence prayer. And we will be doing a podcast to talk more about presence prayer and how to apply the healing of the soul. All right.

Closing PrayerSo why don't we just bow our heads in prayer and thank the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us together and for the truth of your word that reveals your heart for us. Lord, we invite the Holy Spirit to continue the work of transformation within us. Heal the places in our souls that are wounded and need reordering. Renew our minds so that we may walk in your ways. Unite us as one body filled with your Spirit, Lord, so that we may reflect your love and bring glory to your name. We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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LOVE – THE BIG PICTURE
In this passage of Scripture from 1 Corinthians 13 Peter Carblis speaks about the absolute concrete reality of God’s sacrificial love, agape, that reflects the very nature of God, as the Bible clearly says ‘God is love’ (1John 4:16). Peter takes each facet of this diamond of love and explains the various aspects of the nature of God’s love as they relate to our relationships with Him and with one another.

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THE FORMER AND THE LATER RAIN

Hosea was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel (also called Ephraim) during the 8th century B.C. God commands Hosea to marry Gomer, a harlot, to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him. Hosea is the same Hebrew word as Joshua and Jesus. Hosea was the Old Testament prophet with the message for God’s People to inherit the land of promise, and Joshua succeeded Moses as the deliverer of Israel and took them across the Jordan into the land of promise. And Jesus takes humanity into a spiritual land of promise, not earthly territory but the soil of the heart.
God refers to Israel as his bride (Isaiah 62:5, Isaiah 54) and he also calls her unfaithful, as a harlot (Jeremiah 3:1). In Ephesians 5 Paul calls the Church the bride of Christ and he fears for the church going astray by being beguiled from the simplicity that is in Christ.
For I have divine jealousy for you. Betrothing you to one husband, that I may present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Corinthians 11)
So we have this story of both Israel and the Church as being God’s beloved bride and who go through times of unfaithfulness to God and being made desolate - and finally turning back to God in their time of affliction to be revived and restored.
God says to Israel after they have been stubbornly going astray that he is going to leave them to themselves to go their own way and that he will go and return to his place (Heaven) - and that In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. And that is what is happening in the earth and in the church today

Hosea 5:15 God says, I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense.
Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. And then they will say "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us but he will heal us; he has afflicted us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going from us is established as the morning, and He will come to us like the rain, like the former and latter rain to the earth.

There is no mention that Israel was ever revived and restored after two days during the prophecy of Hosea – It was a prophecy of future hope. He prophesied for 30 to 40 years and Israel never repented and at the end of his prophecy Israel were defeated by the Assyrians. So what does this mean that ‘after two days I will revive you’, and in the third day you will live in my presence? It means that we have to see these two days as prophetic periods of time that the Apostle Peter later writes about.
Israel failed in their allegiance to the provisions and promises of God and still now the promise of full possession of their Promised Land awaits them. That promise is one of occupying their earthly territory in the Middle East. But the promise to the Church is to spiritually inherit and occupy the fullness of the spiritual blessings we have in Christ.
Let us look at the interpretation of this prophetic period of time spoken of by Peter.

2Peter 3:8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish (waste their lives), but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away (lyo – moved aside) with a roar, and the heavenly bodies (elemental particles) will be burned up and dissolved (a purifying fire), and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

If one day can be counted as a thousand years then 6 days would be six thousand years. The genealogies of the Bible show that it is now about six thousand years from the time of Adam. In fact I read in an archeological journal recently that civilisation in cities can only be traced back four thousand years, around the area of ancient Ur in the Chaldees, where Abraham lived and from where he was called to go out and prepare for the Hebrew people to possess the Land of Promise. That occurred in around 2000 years BC.
Christ appeared on the earth about 2000 years later. And now we are about 2000 years later at around 6000 years from Adam, according to Biblical genealogy.
(Notice I used the word ‘about’ a few times – no exactness’ – how many people were in the upper room at Pentecost? The bible says about 120!)
And what does ‘living in His presence in the third day’ mean? That would describe the next one thousand years after the 6000 which would mean the seventh day - the one thousand years of rest – Six days of of work and one day of rest God at work redeeming humanity then a day of rest – the millennium

So if we apply the saying ‘I will go and return to my place and after 2 days I will return’ it echoes the words of Jesus 2000 years ago when he spoke to his disciples, because the last time that God said to his people that he would return and go to his place was when Jesus spoke to his disciples before his ascension into Heaven.
John 14:2 I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also… the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

When God left Israel and returned to his place (Heaven) he was giving Israel time to consider their ways in their afflictions and to seek his face and return to him. And in due course in the latter days Israel will be revived and live in his presence. They will receive the healing of their souls from the former and latter rains of revival from the Holy Spirit.
In Israel they had both the spiritual and the agricultural seasons of year. The agricultural season after Pentecost brought the dry months – empty years - and towards the end of that period would come the former rain softening the earth and then the latte rain bringing the harvest. For us spiritually today the former rain is the softening of the hearts of humanity with the water of God’s word along with being broken and churned up and softened through afflictions. That prepares us for the latter rains of spiritual revival for us to become the people that we really are.

The great and awesome day of the Lord is always getting closer no matter when we make our best-guess estimates – there is no exactness - but we're living in days when there are worse things happening in the world than ever before. We will see not only more darkness and tribulation in the earth than ever before, but I have an expectation to see more spiritual activity of the Holy Spirit than we have seen before, as in the past visitations of God since Pentecost, and I believe we're in the beginnings of that right now. Too many good words have been spoken and have fallen on deaf ears and hard hearts. But good seed has been sown and the grace of God and the works of God are going to become more manifest and that will open people’s eyes and give them ears that are ready to hear in these present times. And while the double portion of healing rains is softening the wounded hearts and ripening the seeds the fruit of the Spirit will speedily become evident in transformed hearts and minds.
The Bible says that Workers will still be harvesting when it is time to plough the fields again. They will still be trampling the grapes when it is time for a new crop. Sweet wine will drip from the mountains and pour from the hills (Amos 9:13).
As you walk your steady path of grace and truth and love you can expect God to overtake you and go ahead of you. We are living in the day of the former and the latter rains.

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PRESENCE PRAYER - PRAYER CHANGES US
Paul teaches us the lifechanging prayer of the transformation of our mind and heart. Philippians 4:6-7 which says ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’

The wonderful promise of this Prayer of Change is that God will guard and protect our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ in everything that is happening in our lives. That is what overcomes the anxiety of a busy mind and a fretful heart that burdens our souls, and that is what allows us to pray the prayer of faith with thanksgiving in any situation.
The Greek word for anxious is merimna?? which means to be overly troubled by too many concerns and needs at the one time (or all the time), whether these concerns are our own or for others we care for.

This Scripture is a gracious appeal from God’s Spirit to our spirit – and our spirit is made up of our mind and our heart. But to get through to our spirit God has to get past our soul, and it is our souls that get overcrowded with too many soulish thoughts of the mind and feelings of the heart that fight for priority to get attention.
In Hebrews 4:12 The Bible speaks about the word (logos) of God’s creative design and purpose and that word (logos) is said to be like a sword that is able to divide between the soul and the spirit. And we need that logos word so that we can understand what is happening in our soul and in our spirit, because the anxiety is in the soul but the prayer of faith is in the spirit.

Our communion of our spirit to God’s indwelling Spirit opens the way for God to speak truth into our minds and renew our minds in our spirit. The truth that comes from the spiritual renewal of our mind informs our heart with a faith that believes and trusts in God and in his good will and purpose for us in our prayer for our needs.
What our mind receives is what our heart believes – that is a fridge hanging statement to keep us focussed on what God wants us to know and what he wants us to believe.

That Scripture also gives us an example of that sword word piercing between joints and marrow. The outside of a joint bone is like the soul and the marrow on the inside is like spirit - the real life-giving substance of the bone. Prayer is not just about trying to fix the outside problems that we see about us but about how God reorders us on the inside for us to see his will and for us to receive what he is faithfully putting in place for us.
Good marrow means strong bones – but even if a bone gets broken it will heal well if the marrow is good.

Our souls can become overwhelmed by the outer chaos and disorder that we see around us in this world, but our spirit joined to God’s Spirit is strengthened by the truth and order and promise of the good things of God that he has in store for us. That Scripture ends by saying that that sword word is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, so it helps us to know what is going on in our disturbed soul so that we can exercise faith in our spirit that can assure us that Jesus is dealing with these needs for us in a way that only he can, and in that way our souls can be at rest and rise above the anxiety.
He tells us to bring these things to him with thanksgiving – thanksgiving for what? Thanksgiving that Jesus will intercede with the Father on our behalf according to God’s will for our lives. So that means he is reordering our prayer. God is at work to reorder our lives for the best outcome for our lives – his outcome – not what our stressed or demanding souls would force into action if we could have things our way and not his. That is the peace of being in agreement with God that surpasses all understanding.

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PRESENCE PRAYER THE VEIL

What is the veil?
The veil represents the mindset of separation from God in the soul.
Before Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent to disobey God they lived in the presence of God and were not conscious of any separation between themselves and God within their souls. But after they disobeyed God and listened to darkness, their souls were plunged into a mindset of separation from Him.

Their once innocent and blameless souls became self-serving and willful, hiding in the shadows of shame and guilt from God. Devising strategies to cover up and blame others for their disobedience. This became the separated soul life of humanity from that time on. The veil

The first time this veil is spoken of in the Bible is when Moses went into the presence of the Lord when he received the commandments on Mt Sinai. The Israelites were afraid to look at him or come near him because being in God’s presence caused his face to shine so brightly that he had to cover it with a veil.

Exodus 34:29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him…

The temple also had a veil of separation which separated people from Gods presence. No one was allowed to go through that temple veil, except for the high priest once a year on the day of atonement - they would actually sturck dead if they did. Atonement was celebrated last Sunday and today the Feast of Tabernacles is celebrated sukkot (John 7:37 living water)

Hebrews 9:7 into the second chamber (behind the veil) the high priest went alone once a year, with the blood of sacrifice, which he offered for himself and for the people’s sins committed in ignorance; the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet a reality while the first tabernacle was still standing…
11. But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Paul called the Old Covenant of the Ten Commandments given through Moses the “ministry of death, carved in letters on stone” and he contrasts this with the New Covenant given through Christ, where the Commandments are written in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. When Jesus died for us on the cross, he went through the veil of separation for all of humanity, making the way for us to pass through the veil also and to live a life with the mindset of non-separation between us and God.

Matthew 27:50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.
This was an incredible physical representation orchestrated by God to show us this Old Covenant was over. The veil was physically torn. The whole earth shook. Just imagine that.
Interestingly, that was the end of blood sacrifices for sin for Israel. The veil was torn e through his flesh and blood sacrifice on the cross for all of us, for eternity.

The Old Covenant’s glory was torn and replaced by a New Covenant- a glory that is eternal and internal—Christ in us, the hope of glory (Ephesians 3:4).
No one in the Old Covenant had an inner life of the Holy Spirit within them..

What is the Veil? The veil is the flesh. What is the flesh?

The flesh is our self-made soul where we build an inner self life that is a very poor reflection of how our original spirit self was uniquely created by God to be like him as his child. But the self of the flesh puts the false ‘shadow of us’ on display.

This ‘flesh’ becomes the veil of separation until we realise that we can have direct, unveiled face to face intimacy with God through the Spirit, transforming us from the inside out. He comes into our vulnerability and weakness and shines through with his strength.

The Bible says that Jesus came in the flesh (John 1:14) but he went through life with a totally innocent and blameless soul and with a totally unveiled face.
His soul was tempted in all points such as we are, but he did not sin (Hebrews 4:15 hamartia – miss the mark). Jesus did not have to create his own shadow me-self in his soul- which is the flesh. There was no veil of a mindset of separation from his Father. And when He died for us on the cross, Jesus went through the veil of separation for all of humanity, making the way for us to pass through the veil also and to live a life with the mindset of non-separation between us and God.

Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh.

The Bible says the whole world is under darkness – under the influence of evil 1 John 5:19 describing a world separated from God with a veil over their face that turns them inward towards their soul self instead of towards the face of God. Just like adam and eve did We can get pulled by our soul’s problems to turn inwards into our shadow life or we can get drawn by the Holy Spirit to turn to the Lord, just as the sunlight draws a sunflower to turn to the sun so that it can grow and get life

Paul spoke about Israel in the Old Covenant compared to us in the New Covenant
But their minds were blinded. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains between them and God’s glorious presence, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. (2Corinthians 3:18)
The turning can be gradual, like walking up a hill carrying the burdens of our soul till we get to the top and enter the presence of God, the tabernacle, the holy place where God is, the room spoken about in Matthew 6:6 when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
That turning is actually our repentance – turning from self to God. And when you walk up that hill Jesus is helping you carry the burdens, and while you are in the room Jesus helps you give the burdens to the Father. When you come back down the hill the Father rewards you openly – that is, he will supernaturally show you in some outward way that he has heard you and that he has brought things together for good in such a coincidental way that you know it could only have been God that has done it.

The Old Testament brought harsh judgement and condemnation. But it highlights that with Gods Glory behind a veil, they were always missing the mark by trying to put God on display in their own lives in their own strength rather than trusting Him and putting Him on display. That was to show us that we can't live without God With-in us. But even though we now live a life without the veil, we often act as if it is still there.
When people say repent from your sins, (repent meaning turning from and turning to) and sin meaning to miss the mark- all that is asking you to do is to turn from yourself towards God to help you with why you are missing the mark. That's all sin does, it stops you from living with Him and for Him. In the New Testament the Spirit brings life, forgiveness, mercy, transformation, and freedom (2 Cor. 3:6, 17).

In Presence prayer we come to know God for who he is and what he says and what he does. We know we are loved and mercifully accepted for who we are as our new ‘God with us’ self. Our hearts desire becomes to please him. The veil of separation has been torn down by Jesus. The Father and Jesus and Holy Spirit have come to make their home in us and we delight to do our housecleaning like never before – to sparkle. When people come to the house of our heart, they can feel welcomed and blessed as God can now be on display and not just us.
Paul unveils this wonderful mystery in Colossians.
Col. 1:26 This mystery was kept secret for ages and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people who desire to live with him and for him. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for all of humanity (Gentiles). And this is the mystery - Christ lives in you, giving you assurance of sharing his glory (His life on display though you).

Simply turning to God as Father Son and Holy Spirit in our minds and hearts as often as we can brings us closer to the reality of God’s life within us and makes way for his life to shine through us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels so let us treasure our treasure and the turning takes the veil of separation away and allows our own and other people’s lives to be enriched. The present moment is always the most significant time in history - living with God. Paul OSullivan – pauloss@me.com

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PRESENCE PRAYER SOUL AND SPIRIT

The journey of our lives as human beings with a spirit and a soul involves the reordering of the psychikos or soulish self of separation back into alignment with our true spiritual self in Christ through the Spirit of God. We can become transformed from psychikos or soulish to pneumatikos or spiritual. Paul wrote about this to the church in Corinth.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit because they are `spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

Adam and Eve started that journey by creating a limited human soul.
The first man Adam became (ginomai) a living soul (psychikos) the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit (pneumatikos). But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural psychikos), and then the spiritual. (1Corinthians 15:45)

God had created Adam’s body from the dust of the earth and then breathed his spirit into that body. Adam now had a created body and a created spirit but then the Bible says a really interesting thing - that ‘man became a living soul’.
That word ‘became ‘in the Greek is ginomai, and it means to cause to come into being, to make or create. God did not form a ready-made soul in us, but he created the capacity for us to shape a soul as a personal entity that was to become the expression of who we are in our inner being. That’s becomes the face of us. Our soul expresses the mind and heart of our unique God created spirit through the journey of our life, embodied by a physical body.

Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden with God, and they created blameless or innocent souls. Innocence means to not be harmed or hurt – not feeling forsaken. But harm and hurt and forsakenness came into Adam and Eve’s lives through the lie of the serpent. Satan in the form of the serpent deceived them into believing that God had deprived them of the Divine wisdom that they could have if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve then created souls that separated their true blameless selves from God’s presence. Harm and hurt came into their lives and they became harmful and hurtful people and turned their harmless souls into harmful souls by creating protective helper parts in their souls to avoid feeling forsaken again. These soulish parts created a mindset and a heart-set of separation between them and God. This process became the universal human journey of the soul throughout its life.

Our souls are the expression of our spiritual self but our souls have created an inferior version of OUR spiritual self because of the psychikos soul’s self-serving needs. It has created parts to it that helped us to get over the problems, to deal with rejection, to advance itself, to be able to establish a reputation, to feel a victim or to be successful. It has become the me-self version of what the God with us self was created to be – God with us – Emmanuel.
When we were very young we made immature decisions in our souls to protect us from having to suffer from these early traumas again. Don’t condemn yourself for doing that as you had no option. You were there as a me-self person not knowing that God was there with you. and you didn't say ‘Lord come and help me here’. We tried to work out a way to work through these things - and we created strategies that ended up not having the wisdom to actually work. We created ‘helper parts’ in our souls. We may have gotten our own way but look what those helper parts have done to our relationships, self worth - our lives. This has resulted in our spirits becoming ‘orphaned’. Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans but that he would send us ‘Another Helper’ the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16-18)

The individual uniqueness of every person mirrors the fact that we have each been created with a unique spiritual DNA. That spiritual DNA is contained in the spiritual seed of life of the Word (the Logos) that has spoken our spiritual life into being in eternity. That seed word was destined to be expressed from our spirit into and through our soul and embodied by us as a whole person, spirit soul and body. The journey is about our soul being reordered, not deleted.
James 1:21… receive with meekness the implanted word (logos seed), which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural (genesis) face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Genesis in the Greek means original. So our Genesis self is the original unique spiritual self, designed and created by God’s word (LOGOS) before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4). We discover in the mirror of the Word our true unique spiritual self then we walk away and forget that and get drawn back into expressing our psychikos soulish self again with all its unresolved helper parts.

That unique spirit is waiting to be expressed in a saved and healed soul, saved from what we have plunged our souls into because of a mindset of separation from God. That is why we are looking at presence prayer as a pathway of hope and faith and love back into what our souls could truly express as we draw near to God and ask for the Holy Spirit, our New Helpe,r to reveal to us what Jesus is saying to us and what our Father is doing for us.
Jesus is that LOGOS, the seed of life that encompasses the true DNA of everything created, every instinctive response of every living thing designed and upheld by LOGOS (Hebrews 1:3) and his logos seed has been sown into our unique spirit to make us one in Spirit with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:23)

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made
The Greek logos was seen as the universal rational principle of creativity and design by philosophers like Heraclitus and the Stoics. and they revered this concept. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius saw logos as the intelligent omnipotent and omnipresent Divine force that structured and guided all of existence. But for the Jews the WORD only meant Torah and their relationship to the Word was the fulfillment of the Law.

So John in his Gospel would have deeply offended and insulted the Greeks and the Romans by declaring that Jesus, a bearded Galilean, was the one and only LOGOS. And for the Jews calling him the Word (their Torah) claim meant that he was the fulfillment of the law. so they all despised Jesus. And today the world despises Jesus.
The Bible says that we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (Logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23). This is not only Jesus as the logos seed of eternal life but also as the Word of God as Scripture. *

Today the world believes that the Word, both as Jesus and as Scripture doesn’t mean anything. There exists a cultural spirituality where the word Universe is used as if it was the source of creative design and blessing – The Universe be with you.
Spiritual does not just mean mystical as opposed to material. Cultural spirituality can include reverencing created things and concepts and reading as many books or doing as many rituals possible to heal our souls. In the same way it also includes the religious and legalistic Christianity practiced today- and this mindset is soulish rather than spiritual. But for many people this kind of soulish spirituality has been a pathway to ultimately being drawn into true spirituality. True spirituality is the things of the Spirit of God in Christ (1Corinthians 2). This is the reality of the Creator God as the Father sending his Son Jesus into the world as human. In doing this God joined Divinity to humanity in one person, Jesus, whose death and resurrection and ascension led to the formation of a New Creation born of both human and Divine seed (logos). *Paul even put the church in Corinth in the category of cultural spirituality and his admonishment still applies to the church today.
We began today with the words of Paul to the Corinthians in (1 Corinthians 2:13).The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned.
Paul was addressing the people of the Corinthian church, not just worldly religious spirituality. Paul was dismayed at the lack of true spirituality amongst them. He said they were psychikos- soulish, not pneumatikos – spiritual. He admitted that they had all knowledge and were upfront in spiritual gifts(1 Corinthians 1:7) but he finally said to them
I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal (sarkikos –that is worse than psychikos!), as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal?

God has sent us the Holy Spirit through Jesus, the second Adam, for the healing and salvation of the soul in God’s presence. We can choose to become spiritual (pneumatikos ) people or remain soulish (psychikos) people. The simplest way to experience being transformed from soulish to spiritual is to give ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in times of presence prayer to reveal to us Jesus as the Logos Word who speaks his Word to us in a multitude of ways, both in Scripture and in other ways that only the Holy Spirit can teach us and not other people’s opinions (1John 2:27).
We set aside time in presence prayer to contemplate the love and mercy and power of God in this way, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit reveal to us the will of the Father. The more we consciously do this practice the more our true genesis spiritual self becomes renewed in our minds and in our hearts. The veil of separation that blinds our minds and hearts is taken away and our souls become transformed.

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

PRESENCE PRAYER SOUL AND SPIRIT

The journey of our lives as human beings with a spirit and a soul involves the reordering of the psychikos or soulish self of separation back into alignment with our true spiritual self in Christ through the Spirit of God. We can become transformed from psychikos or soulish to pneumatikos or spiritual. Paul wrote about this to the church in Corinth.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit because they are `spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

Adam and Eve started that journey by creating a limited human soul.
The first man Adam became (ginomai) a living soul (psychikos) the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit (pneumatikos). But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural psychikos), and then the spiritual. (1Corinthians 15:45)

God had created Adam’s body from the dust of the earth and then breathed his spirit into that body. Adam now had a created body and a created spirit but then the Bible says a really interesting thing - that ‘man became a living soul’.
That word ‘became ‘in the Greek is ginomai, and it means to cause to come into being, to make or create. God did not form a ready-made soul in us, but he created the capacity for us to shape a soul as a personal entity that was to become the expression of who we are in our inner being. That’s becomes the face of us. Our soul expresses the mind and heart of our unique God created spirit through the journey of our life, embodied by a physical body.

Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden with God, and they created blameless or innocent souls. Innocence means to not be harmed or hurt – not feeling forsaken. But harm and hurt and forsakenness came into Adam and Eve’s lives through the lie of the serpent. Satan in the form of the serpent deceived them into believing that God had deprived them of the Divine wisdom that they could have if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve then created souls that separated their true blameless selves from God’s presence. Harm and hurt came into their lives and they became harmful and hurtful people and turned their harmless souls into harmful souls by creating protective helper parts in their souls to avoid feeling forsaken again. These soulish parts created a mindset and a heart-set of separation between them and God. This process became the universal human journey of the soul throughout its life.

Our souls are the expression of our spiritual self but our souls have created an inferior version of OUR spiritual self because of the psychikos soul’s self-serving needs. It has created parts to it that helped us to get over the problems, to deal with rejection, to advance itself, to be able to establish a reputation, to feel a victim or to be successful. It has become the me-self version of what the God with us self was created to be – God with us – Emmanuel.
When we were very young we made immature decisions in our souls to protect us from having to suffer from these early traumas again. Don’t condemn yourself for doing that as you had no option. You were there as a me-self person not knowing that God was there with you. and you didn't say ‘Lord come and help me here’. We tried to work out a way to work through these things - and we created strategies that ended up not having the wisdom to actually work. We created ‘helper parts’ in our souls. We may have gotten our own way but look what those helper parts have done to our relationships, self worth - our lives. This has resulted in our spirits becoming ‘orphaned’. Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans but that he would send us ‘Another Helper’ the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16-18)

The individual uniqueness of every person mirrors the fact that we have each been created with a unique spiritual DNA. That spiritual DNA is contained in the spiritual seed of life of the Word (the Logos) that has spoken our spiritual life into being in eternity. That seed word was destined to be expressed from our spirit into and through our soul and embodied by us as a whole person, spirit soul and body. The journey is about our soul being reordered, not deleted.
James 1:21… receive with meekness the implanted word (logos seed), which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural (genesis) face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Genesis in the Greek means original. So our Genesis self is the original unique spiritual self, designed and created by God’s word (LOGOS) before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4). We discover in the mirror of the Word our true unique spiritual self then we walk away and forget that and get drawn back into expressing our psychikos soulish self again with all its unresolved helper parts.

That unique spirit is waiting to be expressed in a saved and healed soul, saved from what we have plunged our souls into because of a mindset of separation from God. That is why we are looking at presence prayer as a pathway of hope and faith and love back into what our souls could truly express as we draw near to God and ask for the Holy Spirit, our New Helpe,r to reveal to us what Jesus is saying to us and what our Father is doing for us.
Jesus is that LOGOS, the seed of life that encompasses the true DNA of everything created, every instinctive response of every living thing designed and upheld by LOGOS (Hebrews 1:3) and his logos seed has been sown into our unique spirit to make us one in Spirit with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:23)

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made
The Greek logos was seen as the universal rational principle of creativity and design by philosophers like Heraclitus and the Stoics. and they revered this concept. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius saw logos as the intelligent omnipotent and omnipresent Divine force that structured and guided all of existence. But for the Jews the WORD only meant Torah and their relationship to the Word was the fulfillment of the Law.

So John in his Gospel would have deeply offended and insulted the Greeks and the Romans by declaring that Jesus, a bearded Galilean, was the one and only LOGOS. And for the Jews calling him the Word (their Torah) claim meant that he was the fulfillment of the law. so they all despised Jesus. And today the world despises Jesus.
The Bible says that we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (Logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23). This is not only Jesus as the logos seed of eternal life but also as the Word of God as Scripture. *

Today the world believes that the Word, both as Jesus and as Scripture doesn’t mean anything. There exists a cultural spirituality where the word Universe is used as if it was the source of creative design and blessing – The Universe be with you.
Spiritual does not just mean mystical as opposed to material. Cultural spirituality can include reverencing created things and concepts and reading as many books or doing as many rituals possible to heal our souls. In the same way it also includes the religious and legalistic Christianity practiced today- and this mindset is soulish rather than spiritual. But for many people this kind of soulish spirituality has been a pathway to ultimately being drawn into true spirituality. True spirituality is the things of the Spirit of God in Christ (1Corinthians 2). This is the reality of the Creator God as the Father sending his Son Jesus into the world as human. In doing this God joined Divinity to humanity in one person, Jesus, whose death and resurrection and ascension led to the formation of a New Creation born of both human and Divine seed (logos). *Paul even put the church in Corinth in the category of cultural spirituality and his admonishment still applies to the church today.
We began today with the words of Paul to the Corinthians in (1 Corinthians 2:13).The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned.
Paul was addressing the people of the Corinthian church, not just worldly religious spirituality. Paul was dismayed at the lack of true spirituality amongst them. He said they were psychikos- soulish, not pneumatikos – spiritual. He admitted that they had all knowledge and were upfront in spiritual gifts(1 Corinthians 1:7) but he finally said to them
I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal (sarkikos –that is worse than psychikos!), as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal?

God has sent us the Holy Spirit through Jesus, the second Adam, for the healing and salvation of the soul in God’s presence. We can choose to become spiritual (pneumatikos ) people or remain soulish (psychikos) people. The simplest way to experience being transformed from soulish to spiritual is to give ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in times of presence prayer to reveal to us Jesus as the Logos Word who speaks his Word to us in a multitude of ways, both in Scripture and in other ways that only the Holy Spirit can teach us and not other people’s opinions (1John 2:27).
We set aside time in presence prayer to contemplate the love and mercy and power of God in this way, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit reveal to us the will of the Father. The more we consciously do this practice the more our true genesis spiritual self becomes renewed in our minds and in our hearts. The veil of separation that blinds our minds and hearts is taken away and our souls become transformed.

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

PRESENCE PRAYER SOUL AND SPIRIT

The journey of our lives as human beings with a spirit and a soul involves the reordering of the psychikos or soulish self of separation back into alignment with our true spiritual self in Christ through the Spirit of God. We can become transformed from psychikos or soulish to pneumatikos or spiritual. Paul wrote about this to the church in Corinth.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit because they are `spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

Adam and Eve started that journey by creating a limited human soul.
The first man Adam became (ginomai) a living soul (psychikos) the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit (pneumatikos). But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural psychikos), and then the spiritual. (1Corinthians 15:45)

God had created Adam’s body from the dust of the earth and then breathed his spirit into that body. Adam now had a created body and a created spirit but then the Bible says a really interesting thing - that ‘man became a living soul’.
That word ‘became ‘in the Greek is ginomai, and it means to cause to come into being, to make or create. God did not form a ready-made soul in us, but he created the capacity for us to shape a soul as a personal entity that was to become the expression of who we are in our inner being. That’s becomes the face of us. Our soul expresses the mind and heart of our unique God created spirit through the journey of our life, embodied by a physical body.

Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden with God, and they created blameless or innocent souls. Innocence means to not be harmed or hurt – not feeling forsaken. But harm and hurt and forsakenness came into Adam and Eve’s lives through the lie of the serpent. Satan in the form of the serpent deceived them into believing that God had deprived them of the Divine wisdom that they could have if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve then created souls that separated their true blameless selves from God’s presence. Harm and hurt came into their lives and they became harmful and hurtful people and turned their harmless souls into harmful souls by creating protective helper parts in their souls to avoid feeling forsaken again. These soulish parts created a mindset and a heart-set of separation between them and God. This process became the universal human journey of the soul throughout its life.

Our souls are the expression of our spiritual self but our souls have created an inferior version of OUR spiritual self because of the psychikos soul’s self-serving needs. It has created parts to it that helped us to get over the problems, to deal with rejection, to advance itself, to be able to establish a reputation, to feel a victim or to be successful. It has become the me-self version of what the God with us self was created to be – God with us – Emmanuel.
When we were very young we made immature decisions in our souls to protect us from having to suffer from these early traumas again. Don’t condemn yourself for doing that as you had no option. You were there as a me-self person not knowing that God was there with you. and you didn't say ‘Lord come and help me here’. We tried to work out a way to work through these things - and we created strategies that ended up not having the wisdom to actually work. We created ‘helper parts’ in our souls. We may have gotten our own way but look what those helper parts have done to our relationships, self worth - our lives. This has resulted in our spirits becoming ‘orphaned’. Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans but that he would send us ‘Another Helper’ the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16-18)

The individual uniqueness of every person mirrors the fact that we have each been created with a unique spiritual DNA. That spiritual DNA is contained in the spiritual seed of life of the Word (the Logos) that has spoken our spiritual life into being in eternity. That seed word was destined to be expressed from our spirit into and through our soul and embodied by us as a whole person, spirit soul and body. The journey is about our soul being reordered, not deleted.
James 1:21… receive with meekness the implanted word (logos seed), which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural (genesis) face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Genesis in the Greek means original. So our Genesis self is the original unique spiritual self, designed and created by God’s word (LOGOS) before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4). We discover in the mirror of the Word our true unique spiritual self then we walk away and forget that and get drawn back into expressing our psychikos soulish self again with all its unresolved helper parts.

That unique spirit is waiting to be expressed in a saved and healed soul, saved from what we have plunged our souls into because of a mindset of separation from God. That is why we are looking at presence prayer as a pathway of hope and faith and love back into what our souls could truly express as we draw near to God and ask for the Holy Spirit, our New Helpe,r to reveal to us what Jesus is saying to us and what our Father is doing for us.
Jesus is that LOGOS, the seed of life that encompasses the true DNA of everything created, every instinctive response of every living thing designed and upheld by LOGOS (Hebrews 1:3) and his logos seed has been sown into our unique spirit to make us one in Spirit with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:23)

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made
The Greek logos was seen as the universal rational principle of creativity and design by philosophers like Heraclitus and the Stoics. and they revered this concept. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius saw logos as the intelligent omnipotent and omnipresent Divine force that structured and guided all of existence. But for the Jews the WORD only meant Torah and their relationship to the Word was the fulfillment of the Law.

So John in his Gospel would have deeply offended and insulted the Greeks and the Romans by declaring that Jesus, a bearded Galilean, was the one and only LOGOS. And for the Jews calling him the Word (their Torah) claim meant that he was the fulfillment of the law. so they all despised Jesus. And today the world despises Jesus.
The Bible says that we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (Logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23). This is not only Jesus as the logos seed of eternal life but also as the Word of God as Scripture. *

Today the world believes that the Word, both as Jesus and as Scripture doesn’t mean anything. There exists a cultural spirituality where the word Universe is used as if it was the source of creative design and blessing – The Universe be with you.
Spiritual does not just mean mystical as opposed to material. Cultural spirituality can include reverencing created things and concepts and reading as many books or doing as many rituals possible to heal our souls. In the same way it also includes the religious and legalistic Christianity practiced today- and this mindset is soulish rather than spiritual. But for many people this kind of soulish spirituality has been a pathway to ultimately being drawn into true spirituality. True spirituality is the things of the Spirit of God in Christ (1Corinthians 2). This is the reality of the Creator God as the Father sending his Son Jesus into the world as human. In doing this God joined Divinity to humanity in one person, Jesus, whose death and resurrection and ascension led to the formation of a New Creation born of both human and Divine seed (logos). *Paul even put the church in Corinth in the category of cultural spirituality and his admonishment still applies to the church today.
We began today with the words of Paul to the Corinthians in (1 Corinthians 2:13).The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned.
Paul was addressing the people of the Corinthian church, not just worldly religious spirituality. Paul was dismayed at the lack of true spirituality amongst them. He said they were psychikos- soulish, not pneumatikos – spiritual. He admitted that they had all knowledge and were upfront in spiritual gifts(1 Corinthians 1:7) but he finally said to them
I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal (sarkikos –that is worse than psychikos!), as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal?

God has sent us the Holy Spirit through Jesus, the second Adam, for the healing and salvation of the soul in God’s presence. We can choose to become spiritual (pneumatikos ) people or remain soulish (psychikos) people. The simplest way to experience being transformed from soulish to spiritual is to give ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in times of presence prayer to reveal to us Jesus as the Logos Word who speaks his Word to us in a multitude of ways, both in Scripture and in other ways that only the Holy Spirit can teach us and not other people’s opinions (1John 2:27).
We set aside time in presence prayer to contemplate the love and mercy and power of God in this way, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit reveal to us the will of the Father. The more we consciously do this practice the more our true genesis spiritual self becomes renewed in our minds and in our hearts. The veil of separation that blinds our minds and hearts is taken away and our souls become transformed.

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

PRESENCE PRAYER SOUL AND SPIRIT

The journey of our lives as human beings with a spirit and a soul involves the reordering of the psychikos or soulish self of separation back into alignment with our true spiritual self in Christ through the Spirit of God. We can become transformed from psychikos or soulish to pneumatikos or spiritual. Paul wrote about this to the church in Corinth.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit because they are `spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

Adam and Eve started that journey by creating a limited human soul.
The first man Adam became (ginomai) a living soul (psychikos) the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit (pneumatikos). But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural psychikos), and then the spiritual. (1Corinthians 15:45)

God had created Adam’s body from the dust of the earth and then breathed his spirit into that body. Adam now had a created body and a created spirit but then the Bible says a really interesting thing - that ‘man became a living soul’.
That word ‘became ‘in the Greek is ginomai, and it means to cause to come into being, to make or create. God did not form a ready-made soul in us, but he created the capacity for us to shape a soul as a personal entity that was to become the expression of who we are in our inner being. That’s becomes the face of us. Our soul expresses the mind and heart of our unique God created spirit through the journey of our life, embodied by a physical body.

Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden with God, and they created blameless or innocent souls. Innocence means to not be harmed or hurt – not feeling forsaken. But harm and hurt and forsakenness came into Adam and Eve’s lives through the lie of the serpent. Satan in the form of the serpent deceived them into believing that God had deprived them of the Divine wisdom that they could have if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve then created souls that separated their true blameless selves from God’s presence. Harm and hurt came into their lives and they became harmful and hurtful people and turned their harmless souls into harmful souls by creating protective helper parts in their souls to avoid feeling forsaken again. These soulish parts created a mindset and a heart-set of separation between them and God. This process became the universal human journey of the soul throughout its life.

Our souls are the expression of our spiritual self but our souls have created an inferior version of OUR spiritual self because of the psychikos soul’s self-serving needs. It has created parts to it that helped us to get over the problems, to deal with rejection, to advance itself, to be able to establish a reputation, to feel a victim or to be successful. It has become the me-self version of what the God with us self was created to be – God with us – Emmanuel.
When we were very young we made immature decisions in our souls to protect us from having to suffer from these early traumas again. Don’t condemn yourself for doing that as you had no option. You were there as a me-self person not knowing that God was there with you. and you didn't say ‘Lord come and help me here’. We tried to work out a way to work through these things - and we created strategies that ended up not having the wisdom to actually work. We created ‘helper parts’ in our souls. We may have gotten our own way but look what those helper parts have done to our relationships, self worth - our lives. This has resulted in our spirits becoming ‘orphaned’. Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans but that he would send us ‘Another Helper’ the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16-18)

The individual uniqueness of every person mirrors the fact that we have each been created with a unique spiritual DNA. That spiritual DNA is contained in the spiritual seed of life of the Word (the Logos) that has spoken our spiritual life into being in eternity. That seed word was destined to be expressed from our spirit into and through our soul and embodied by us as a whole person, spirit soul and body. The journey is about our soul being reordered, not deleted.
James 1:21… receive with meekness the implanted word (logos seed), which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural (genesis) face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Genesis in the Greek means original. So our Genesis self is the original unique spiritual self, designed and created by God’s word (LOGOS) before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4). We discover in the mirror of the Word our true unique spiritual self then we walk away and forget that and get drawn back into expressing our psychikos soulish self again with all its unresolved helper parts.

That unique spirit is waiting to be expressed in a saved and healed soul, saved from what we have plunged our souls into because of a mindset of separation from God. That is why we are looking at presence prayer as a pathway of hope and faith and love back into what our souls could truly express as we draw near to God and ask for the Holy Spirit, our New Helpe,r to reveal to us what Jesus is saying to us and what our Father is doing for us.
Jesus is that LOGOS, the seed of life that encompasses the true DNA of everything created, every instinctive response of every living thing designed and upheld by LOGOS (Hebrews 1:3) and his logos seed has been sown into our unique spirit to make us one in Spirit with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:23)

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made
The Greek logos was seen as the universal rational principle of creativity and design by philosophers like Heraclitus and the Stoics. and they revered this concept. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius saw logos as the intelligent omnipotent and omnipresent Divine force that structured and guided all of existence. But for the Jews the WORD only meant Torah and their relationship to the Word was the fulfillment of the Law.

So John in his Gospel would have deeply offended and insulted the Greeks and the Romans by declaring that Jesus, a bearded Galilean, was the one and only LOGOS. And for the Jews calling him the Word (their Torah) claim meant that he was the fulfillment of the law. so they all despised Jesus. And today the world despises Jesus.
The Bible says that we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (Logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23). This is not only Jesus as the logos seed of eternal life but also as the Word of God as Scripture. *

Today the world believes that the Word, both as Jesus and as Scripture doesn’t mean anything. There exists a cultural spirituality where the word Universe is used as if it was the source of creative design and blessing – The Universe be with you.
Spiritual does not just mean mystical as opposed to material. Cultural spirituality can include reverencing created things and concepts and reading as many books or doing as many rituals possible to heal our souls. In the same way it also includes the religious and legalistic Christianity practiced today- and this mindset is soulish rather than spiritual. But for many people this kind of soulish spirituality has been a pathway to ultimately being drawn into true spirituality. True spirituality is the things of the Spirit of God in Christ (1Corinthians 2). This is the reality of the Creator God as the Father sending his Son Jesus into the world as human. In doing this God joined Divinity to humanity in one person, Jesus, whose death and resurrection and ascension led to the formation of a New Creation born of both human and Divine seed (logos). *Paul even put the church in Corinth in the category of cultural spirituality and his admonishment still applies to the church today.
We began today with the words of Paul to the Corinthians in (1 Corinthians 2:13).The natural (psychikos – soulish) person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned.
Paul was addressing the people of the Corinthian church, not just worldly religious spirituality. Paul was dismayed at the lack of true spirituality amongst them. He said they were psychikos- soulish, not pneumatikos – spiritual. He admitted that they had all knowledge and were upfront in spiritual gifts(1 Corinthians 1:7) but he finally said to them
I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal (sarkikos –that is worse than psychikos!), as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal?

God has sent us the Holy Spirit through Jesus, the second Adam, for the healing and salvation of the soul in God’s presence. We can choose to become spiritual (pneumatikos ) people or remain soulish (psychikos) people. The simplest way to experience being transformed from soulish to spiritual is to give ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in times of presence prayer to reveal to us Jesus as the Logos Word who speaks his Word to us in a multitude of ways, both in Scripture and in other ways that only the Holy Spirit can teach us and not other people’s opinions (1John 2:27).
We set aside time in presence prayer to contemplate the love and mercy and power of God in this way, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit reveal to us the will of the Father. The more we consciously do this practice the more our true genesis spiritual self becomes renewed in our minds and in our hearts. The veil of separation that blinds our minds and hearts is taken away and our souls become transformed.

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

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PRESENCE PRAYER AT HOME WITH GOD

We discussed last week that Jesus said in my Father’s house there are many mansions (mone – at home with God). I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2). There is a unique individual mone for every person ever born – no two people build the same house for God. And remember the mansions were not only prepared for Heaven but for here on earth as we become the dwelling (mone) for God here. Jesus said My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home (mansion – mone) with him. (John 14:23). The more we dwell with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit – at home with God here on earth the more they unveil who they are to us, whether we are here on earth or in Heaven, because faith and hope and love are eternal and will remain from age to age for people to come to know and love God more and more.

How do we travel that journey of living a life at home with God in all the difficulties and problems? Paul tells us that staying connected to God is the key. He said pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16).
Praying without ceasing would seem to be an impossible task but what is meant here is that we can maintain a mindset of connection with God at all times so that what we do and how we feel whether positively or negatively is a ‘God with us’ conversation.

And the Holy Spirit is praying for us without ceasing! John 16:7 – Jesus said he would be sent into the world to convince everybody that they have missed the mark of being aligned with his purpose for their lives – that’s your next door neighbour as well as people going to church. - He is also wanting us all to know that he has overcome the power of darkness that they have been slaves to in their fears and anxieties.

The process of becoming still is a prayer that Paul teaches us in our sufferings and problems.

Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called (those invited) to live according to His purpose.
Those who are the called according to is purpose are those who desire to live according to his purpose and to respond to that invitation.

And we know that all things work together for good - in other words but I know you do it Father the way you always do, and we only find out how great you are when you show us what you’ve done according to your Will - Because we dont see that but we dont know it at the time… this is our walk all the time growing in faith and promise. to those who love God, to those who are the called (those invited) to live according to His purpose.

As we learn to become actively connected and still with God, we can grow in the practice of being at peace, trusting that he is always working behind the scenes on our behalf.

Job complained about his affliction and sufferings to God (Job 30:20) and God said he accepted Job’s prayer, but he rebuked Job’s friends. Job had come to know God in his suffering, but his friends only found judgement in their hearts for Job (Job 42:8).
I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. For I know that you will bring me to deathand to the house appointed for all living. House- MANSIONS! and God said he accepted Job, but he rebuked Job’s friends.

But God wasn’t angry with Job because he complained. God was pleased with him for simply having a conversation. Even through the most awful trials, and countless sufferings.
But God said to Job’s friend Eliphaz “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7).
Jesus also spoke to God in the midst of his suffering in the Garden of gethsemane and asked if the cu of suffering could be taken from him, and was there another way but then said – nevertheless not my will but thine be done.

As we learn to become actively connected and still with God, we can grow in the practice of being at peace, trusting that he is always working behind the scenes on our behalf, being still and knowing God As an act of faith and thanksgiving.
So the Holy Spirit is also praying unceasingly FOR us! And we Maintain a connection/conversation whether it is positive and faithful or even when it is negative and perplexed. We learn t believe and say ‘God you re aways right but not so with me And being connected it brings the blessing of peace, or agreement with God..
Phil 4.6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Even when it doesn't feel like it. In times of trials we might say Lord, this is a bit beyond me… but I’m going to accept it. I know you're there with me. Why didn't I get that job, or why are my relationships struggling. We don't get to see what God is doing in the here and now, but if we are open to receiving what God has to show us, we will be surprised by how things get reordered in an incredible way you could have never imagined. Have faith that God is always working behind the scenes in the supernatural, working all things together for good for those who respond to the invitation to be living in His purpose. That's what Paul meant by praying without ceasing. And that's God's will for you. People are always saying what is God's will!? It's as simple as that. Staying connected - that is praying without ceasing. Not letting your own stuff get in the way all the time. What you think you know better about or can do or understand better. Expect that He sees everything we need, and He wants to provide it for us as a father does. We can now stay connected in a presence prayer with God

1 Thessalonians 5:18 pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
This becomes the practice of Presence Prayer which we will be discussing furher as we go on. -you're in His Will. You have been found in him, you're praying without ceasing, and He refines your faith into constantly saying thank you no matter what is happening. Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

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AT HOME WITH GOD

I’ve had a lot of questions over the years of what I think Heaven would be like. I would like to have the answers, especially in the last little while. And I’m content to wait for God to show us in his time. But what I’m going to talk about today is something that has been on my heart for some time and I’ve felt a deeper understanding of what Jesus was teaching us about his hope and faith and love for our lives here on earth that will continue on in Heaven.

We know we will get a new supernatural body at the time of the Final Resurrection when Jesus comes back. But there is still a time in between - being with the Lord in Heaven before that Final Resurrection that I’m going to look at here, and it is clear that we will have a recognisable resurrected body just as Jesus had when he walked the earth for forty days after his resurrection. But other than that, we cannot be specific It has not yet been revealed what we shall be (1 John 3:2).

I’m speaking today about being at home with God in our inner being whether we are on earth, or whether we are at home with him in Heaven.
Jesus tried to explain to his disciples about how he was leaving them to go and be at home with his Father and he said he was going to prepare a home for them also. He used the word ‘mansion’ to describe that home (mone – abiding with, making a home. God being at home with us and us being at home with God.
John 14:1 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you… that where I am, there you may be also. Jesus went on to say If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home (mansion – mone) with him.

So I have two questions.
How do we build that house so that we can be at home with God and he can be at home with him?
And how do we live in that house?

We will look first at how Paul tells us how to start to build the house.
1Corinthians 3:10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

The foundation is the work of Jesus Christ, the foundation stone that gave his life for us that we could become partakers of the Divine nature through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit in us burns off the dead wood of dead works of wood and hay and stubble, such as ego and ambition and superficial superspiritual success. He transforms us into the likeness of Jesus. The likeness of Jesus is the silver and the gold. The silver represents his redeeming mercy and forgiveness, and the gold represents the nature of God. The fire represents the trials of faith spoken of by Peter.

1Peter 1: 7,9 For a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, or a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with unspeakable joy and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls

We will now look at how to live in the house by looking at some things we have mentioned that Jesus has said. Jesus said in my Father’s house there are many mansions (mone – at home with God). I go to prepare a place for you.(John 14:2). There is a unique individual mone for every person ever born – no two people build the same house for God.
Jesus said My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home (mansion – mone) with him. (John 14:23).
The unique spiritual home (mone-mansion) that we build with God and for God becomes the dwelling place for The Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit who each have a role to play for us and with us in the building and the purpose and meaning to be expressed in that house that is our home. The Father is the designer and provider of the style, the furniture the decoration, the colour and the variety and character of the house. That lovely House of yours that the Father designed with you will draw people to meet Jesus in your unique and special way. Just as he designed every little detail of his creation here on earth. With such intention, beauty, and creativity and with its own personal nature – just look around you.

Jesus is the word of truth and faith and love grace that creates the life and character of the conversation in the house. That becomes the expression of how we are in the world and in relationship with the people around us. When you work on building your HOUSE with good things, the right paint and furnishings and plan, burning off the deadwood of the ego and getting rid of as much junk as you can and making an inviting HOME with the Father, then Jesus, the WORD will speak through you naturally in His way, and You can trust in that and have Faith for it.

The Holy Spirit is the one who transforms every person who is welcomed into our house. This transformation starts with us and touches the minds and hearts of all who come in.
The Holy Spirit is the Translator and interpreter. You won’t have to try to get your point across, the Holy Spirit does that for you.
You won’t need to strive in your opinions to make people believe what you say, or to “Get it” because they will supernaturally hear and understand by the grace of God it. That is his job and he does it well. We get caught up in thinking its our job.

That was always the way Christianity was meant to be. Jesus said once to his disciples You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. (John 5:39). Jesus challenges the Church to hear those words and do them. Too often the Church seems to have had a better idea about knowing God – Just read about him and argue with one another about what the Bible says about him.

We have 36,000 Christian denominations making too much room for everyone telling his neighbour about God and perhaps not enough room to let God be at home in us and us at home in him. That way we would share about who we know around a family table instead of debate about what we know from behind a pulpit. It is not too late to start and my hunger for spiritual fellowship is to bring Him whom we are getting to know to a living table in a living room in a spiritual home that he is dwelling in and that he is helping us to build. We are offered the opportunity to build that home in which we can be at home with God.
Paul said I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7)
But Paul also tells us that even though a course on earth may be finished, there is more to come in Heaven. He even tells us that he experienced being taken to the third Heaven to see Heavenly mysteries that he was not permitted to utter on the earth (2Corinthians 12:2).
He tells us that when all earthly things pass away faith and hope and love will continue to operate eternally.
1Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Only Jesus finished his eternal course completely on earth, but for everybody else there will be age to age learning of the unfolding of the revelation of the nature of God to us.
We are offered our course to be lived at home with him on the earth and then he brings us to our home in Heaven where a greater dimension of building that home with him continues to unfold.
The more we dwell with the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit – at home with God here on earth the more they unveil who they are to us, whether we are here on earth or in Heaven, because faith and hope and love are eternal and will remain from age to age for people to come to know and love God more and more. This becomes our age-to-age eternal destiny.

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com.

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FAITH AND HOPE AND TINEKE

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance (hypostasis – the abiding basic reality) of things (pragma – work and business of God) hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

Faith is abiding in the supernatural work of God doing his will for us in the world of the unseen in the things we hope for - and the assurance of his perfect will coming to pass. In that faith we surrender our will for us to his will for us.
Faith is completed in observing the event that comes to pass in God’s sovereign will.
When we observe the event we give thanks, and we receive more understanding of who God is.
But what we pray to happen may not happen in the way we had first hoped it would.
Jesus said ‘If there be any other way, take this cup of suffering from me nevertheless not my will but thine be done’
Hope is the ongoing trust in the eventuality of God’s perfect will being accomplished in his way and in his time for our prayer. It sits in the middle of our desire and God’s will and his timing. Tineke and I lived in that hope. The Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit when we receive his gift of faith and it bears witness to our spirit for our hope. We had a witness of hope.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. The bible speaks of the people of faith in Hebrews 11 who died with the testimony of faith without receiving the promise.
The completion of faith is the event of a promise. the completion of hope is the eventuality of a promise. The promise is always the perfect will of God for which we give thanks.
We just read that the first experience of faith that God offers to us is about his creation of the world through his word. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God
The word for ‘understand’ in that verse is noe?? which means to observe and comprehend and be assured of that event. Most people observe and are in awe of the order and beauty of the universe and they attribute that wonder to a theory called evolution, but some receive a revelation by faith and observe and are in awe of the order and beauty of the universe that has been uttered into existence by God’s Word.

I wont be speaking at the funeral of course so I’d like to share some things about Tneke and me now. The way I came to have that faith in God’s creation was a long and winding road. It started when I met Tineke when she was a university student working as an assistant in a pharmacy during the holidays, and the owner of the pharmacy asked me to come and do a locum for him so he could go skiing. It happened that I was also at the same university as her, having gone back to uni to study medicine and so we continued the relationship from that time on, and then I was introduced to her family and I became a semi-permanent fixture at her home. I also decided to forget about doing medicine – another future had walked into my life.
Tineke’s mother Martha was a devoted Christian, and Martha was wary of this catholic university student who believed in evolution, which you had to do to pass the exams, and it was inconsequential to me at that time. But I remember the day years later, after I received a revelation of who Jesus was as my saviour and I read that verse about understanding that the worlds were framed by the word of God and it was a total and complete reality to me and I wondered what I had been thinking all my life. Martha and I got to love one another and lo and behold I ended up becoming her pastor at our church, Northern beaches Christian Centre. I was now living by faith – the faith that said that God was always working his will into our lives for our good in the world of the unseen.

Then I realised that my faith was nothing but the abiding under the supernatural work of God for everything I could ever hope for in my life. That meant that I learned to live with the hope of the glory of God, as the Bible says, ‘we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2).
The hope of the glory of God simply means living in the expectation of God being on display in our lives as we entrust everything to him to bring his will to pass in his way and in his time – that is a living hope, and that is what Tineke lived within over these last six months.

But the next experience of faith that the Bible speaks about after creation is that of the faith of Abel – that is the faith I saw in Tineke’s life and that is what I would like to share with you. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. (verse 4)
The faith of Abel was that he wanted to please God and so he offered a more excellent sacrifice to God than his brother. His willingness to let his life be a sacrificial offering to God was what I saw in the mind and heart of Tineke’s soul as she sacrificially gave her life in lovingly serving God in serving her family and those outside her family that God had placed in her life to care for. And through that humble submission to God’s will, Tineke being dead still speaks - and there are others from amongst us here who have gone to be with the Lord, and I believe their faith still speaks.

At one stage I thought I had faith for her healing because of other Scriptures that spoke about healing and for which I asked for confirmation - and circumstances came about that appeared to suggest confirmation, but what truly remained as a witness in my spirit was hope and not a promise of faith that I could proclaim. Tineke suffered the ravages ofa dreadful disease and it was predicted that the immunotherapy would weaken her to the extent that it would not be tolerable but she struggled with an astounding courage but then a rogue infection hit her which was not discovered in time and her body could not withstand it. We sat with her as she took her last breath listening to a most special spiritual song that she had told lucy she wanted for her funeral. I had not been aware of that.
The word that Tineke and I lived within and had agreement on was the word of hope that we held onto without wavering. Our hope remained in our trust in the goodness of God to be revealed in his way and in his time – and we left that in his hands

Tineke, being dead still speaks. Tineke’s faith still speaks to me. It was over three years ago that I shared a vision that I had to bring understanding to people of the truth of the salvation of the soul receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of the soul (1Peter 1:9).
Tineke joined me in putting together of that vision of the healing and salvation of the soul and we shared in the Scriptures together and I attempted to put so many Scriptures together that came cascading upon each other and it became difficult for me to know where to start and how to end and what to put in the middle. Tineke called it a blueprint but she knew it had to be ordered and structured and presented in a way that could be received and understood.

Then one day Tineke read a verse from Habakkuk to me that The Lord had given her about our vision together for this. Habakkuk 2:2 Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
Tineke helped me make the vision plain and to put the words in order and sequence so that people would understand it. It took about three years and I could not have done it without her and we were at the beginning of running it as a course so that people who heard it could run with it. Scott Kardash with his gift of knowledge of the word and his computer tech skills worked tirelessly with me to present it as a group discussion and I began to share it in Scott and Lisa’s home to her home group. Then Tineke became critically ill – and now she is gone.

It is as if Tineke and I were driving a beautiful car together when all of a sudden the wheels of the car fell off and Tineke was no longer there. And that is where I am now, and I am asking God what to do. But then I remembered the Scriptures that God gave to Tineke… For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
I don’t know how I am going to do that as I feel empty of all energy and motivation but I know the grace of God will become my sufficiency and if it seems slow I will wait for it for it will surely come, it will not delay. Tineke being dead still speaks from that Scripture and I believe she would also like me to put the wheels back on that car and get back on track. And that gives me faith that God will speak, and I will hear him.

Paul Sullivan - pauloss@me.com

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GOD’S GRACE IN US

1Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am
When Paul made that statement, he knew that what he had become through God’s grace was God’s doing, and not his doing. He also said it was not him doing the work of God, but it was the grace of Jesus working with him. That grace was God’s activity upon his soul that empowered him to respond to God in love and the surrender of his will and to know that Jesus was working through him every moment of his life.

Generally Grace can be seen working in someone’s life when they are doing some good thing that they love to do and they make it look easy even if it is very difficult.
In sporting terms if a tennis player saw Roger Federer playing tennis and compared themselves to Federer they would see tennis grace in action and wish they had that grace in their game.
Jesus lived a Divine life full of grace and truth within his limited humanity and people saw God at work in him and through him.

As a Pharisee Paul thought he was a top-class man of God before the grace of God took over his life.
Philippians 3:4 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
But then he found grace; And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:14) God’s grace for Paul was waiting for him from before he was born.
Before Paul found grace, he was part of the disorder and violence of a treacherous world in a dark time in history. Paul had seen himself as a religious man of great competence and great commitment to the cause of his Jewish tradition. He served God through his own ambition and strategies and he took great pride in his own achievements in persecuting Christians. Paul’s religion had not put God’s love or mercy in his heart or a humble and surrendered will towards the Father, or oneness in the Spirit with Jesus. For that he had to find grace in the eyes of the Lord through Jesus

After he found grace, he became part of God’s answer of love and light that overcame the darkness of that world. Jesus had overcome the darkness through his death and resurrection, and now he was sending forth messengers of his grace. God is doing the same thing today!

There are multitudes of people who are committed to the cause of doing things for God that have a similar zeal and passion for success like Paul did but have yet to find the grace of God for whatever good thing God has planned for them.
We might be inclined to think that Paul’s existence was of such significance and importance for what God called him to do, that the activity of God’s grace upon us could not be anything like God’s grace upon Paul. But we would be wrong to think that, as Paul wrote to Titus concerning the grace upon all of us through Jesus. For the grace of God that brings salvation has shone upon all mankind.

And while that grace is there waiting to shine, it is also there waiting to be found. The finding of grace came upon people in the Old Testament who saw the saving power of God and gave themselves to be an expression of that.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. God also told Moses that he had found grace in his sight, and that he knew him by name. And in the New Testament we are urged to find his grace in times of need.
Come boldly to the throne of grace that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)
The finding and receiving of grace for us is through our faith, as we realise that we are not sufficient of ourselves to produce grace by ourselves, but we also realise that we have access to his grace in our insufficiency through faith. That grace releases his work upon us and through us.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1-2)

Grace is the loving activity of God upon a human soul, and when we know that we can access this grace through our faith we realize that it is the sufficiency for each one of us to do what God has called us to do – ‘called’ – kleo, means invited- invited to love and serve and bless those people in our world. That grace upon us allows salvation to shine upon all those people that God places us amongst. Just like Paul we are what we are by the grace of God, and we do what we do by the grace of God – ‘set apart before we were born, and called by his grace, and pleased to reveal his Son in us’.
That was and still is the Lord’s doing, and I pray we will see many such miracles in these days in which we live.

Satan gave humanity a rule of destruction to live by – a deadly commandment – that you hate one another as I have hated you, and we are living in times where there are many obeying that commandment of fear and hatred. But God’s love which casts out all fear is on the rise today through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us his new Commandment – that you love one another as I have loved you.
Paul tells us that it was God’s love that compelled his heart to serve him and to serve the people he was sent to. He writes Whatever we do, it is certainly not for our own gain but because Christ’s love compels us. (2Corinthians 5:14).
Paul’s soul was bursting with that powerful love and he could hardly contain himself when he said, May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with the fulness of God himself (Ephesians 3:17-19).

Paul OSullivan - pauloss@me.com

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THE SALVATION OF THE SOUL AND THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE
We’re finishing up Module One of our Salvation of the Soul series with this sixth and final session. We’ve explored how, in response to early experiences of forsakenness, a person can create a protective helper part in their soul. These strategies becomes embedded and trapped as immature attempts to protect us from harm, leading to more unnecessary suffering over a person’s life. We’ve learned that our spirit can discover and gently engage with these outdated parts, not as enemies, but as once-useful protectors doing their best. With spiritual authority and compassion, we can invite them to step aside and make room for our true Helper—the Holy Spirit—who reveals to us our God-designed self, united with Jesus and the Father.

There is a graphic story of a spiritual struggle in Genesis 32 about Jacob who wrestles with God, where God appears to Jacob in the form of an angel. Jacob’s life had been one continuous struggle, creating many unhelpful helper parts in his soul, using his own wits and skills and devious ways to get what he believed was due to him. His twin brother Esau came out of the womb before him, but Jacob grabbed his heel to get there first and it went on from there because it was in Jacob’s spirit to want the blessing of God upon his life - that was his heart, and we discover later that it was not Esau’s heart. But Jacob had lied and cheated and achieved many successes and some failures by constantly putting his unhelpful helper parts to use.
He got to the point in in his life after cheating his brother Esau and pretending to his blind father Isaac that he was his brother, to get the first born blessing and manipulating his father-in-Law Laban that he knew there had to be change in his life that only God could achieve in him. He was about to meet up with Esau again after many years in a proposed meeting for reconciliation, and he was worried that Esau might even exact revenge upon him. He let his family go on ahead and stayed alone and in the night, he finds himself in a spiritual struggle with God in the form of an angel and wrestles with God.

In Jacob's wrestle with God, he became both a loser and a winner in the same encounter, just as we do with God because we can't beat God, but we stay in the struggle because God’s blessing means more to us than any other blessing. And Jacob refused to let God go until God had blessed him. So in his willingness to have attitudes and behaviours overcome in his soul, he showed God that he was sincere in his spirit. And then God mercifully affirmed him in that by saying, ‘you have prevailed with God’. So, he didn't beat God, but God still declared him a spiritual winner. His spirit yielded to God and his soul surrendered its many unhelpful helpers, and he won God’s blessing. They had thought they knew better than God in their grasping for blessings rather than faithfully receiving them from God. That is what our helper parts do – until they get to know and faithfully trust God for his best for us. But we can say to our souls to hold fast to the confession of your hope without wavering for he who has promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23). And God was faithful to Jacob with his promise despite Jacob’s wayward ways.

God changed not only his nature, but also changed his name from Jacob to Israel, which means prevailing with God. So our spiritual struggle with God is not against God, it's with God, and he says ‘we can walk together’. Israel also means prince. He received a new identity and a new place of authority in the purpose of God for his life. But he also received a permanent limp where his hip bone was damaged when the angel struck him and that finished the struggle, and this left Jacob with a new moment by moment awareness of his vulnerability. Now this is being a real person, and his unhelpful helper parts were no longer hidden, but they were no longer ruling his life if and when they were triggered. He now knew what to choose, and he knew how to choose, and he knew how to live in God's blessing, and that limp kept reminding him - you're vulnerable. He could glory in his spiritual struggles and infirmities, because when he was weak God was strong in him and with him.
Paul also tells us of his many spiritual struggles, and he encourages us in our spiritual struggles. He said when I am weak the power of Christ can rest upon me. (2Corinthians 12:9).
Our spirit knows all the parts of us, and our struggles are like weighty burdens that our helper parts are carrying, and they often confuse our interpretations of situations, and they allow self-focussed emotional reactions and errors of judgment to occur – the missing of the mark – the sin which we later regret. The Bible speaks of these burdens and struggles in the book of Hebrews. ‘Lay aside the weights and the sin that so easily besets us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12:1)
This is what is meant by our besetting sin – the repetitive missing of the mark, driven by entrenched unhelpful helpers.

Jesus tells us to lay aside our burdens and come to Him for rest: Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy burdened (phortizo 5412 - to overburden with ceremony or spiritual anxiety – our spiritual struggle). Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28).
His yoke is easy because he offers us grace to walk closely with him, bonded and supported. Instead of carrying the heavy weight of old soul helper parts struggles and confusion, we now take on a lighter burden – a lighter spiritual struggle - the challenge of trusting Jesus. But even that faith comes from Him; He is the author and finisher of our faith. He’s saying, “I’m doing the heavy lifting—believe in me.” Jesus lifts the pain and failure we carry and gives us rest. We are no longer bonded to unhelpful soul strategies -we are yoked with Him.

This becomes an intelligent and spiritual process of our human spirit, together with the Holy Spirit, having dialogue with those parts with curiosity, and having those parts indicate to us what they feel, what they think, and what do they think they have to do in order to keep our whole system in balance at the time. And we now become Unbonded from them and bonded to Jesus through the New Helper – the Holy Spirit who brings the truth of what's been going on and what will now go on in our faith walk with Jesus.

God planned in eternity for the saving of our soul and to become transformed into a Life-giving Spirit, after his likeness, not just in his image. Jesus became that life giving spirit by becoming human when he was already a life-giving spirit in heaven. And we become a life-giving Spirit by becoming partakers of his Divine nature. He planned that before Adam even sinned. We could say that Jesus had already saved us before Adam even fell.

The faith process of the transformative work of coming into the likeness of Jesus as a life-giving Spirit is outlined in Ephesians chapter four. Paul knew the experience of having the ‘Old Man’ – the nature of Adam within him while at the same time having the ‘New Man’ – the Spirit of the life of Christ Jesus within him. He explains to us the process of making the inner exchange from living as the old creation to living in the New Creation – from a mindset of separation to a mindset of togetherness.
Put off your old man (the old self in the likeness of Adam), which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt (phtherio -wasteful and ruinous manner) through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the New Man (the New self), created after the likeness of God in true righteousness (which means being aligned with God’s ways) and holiness (set apart for his destined purpose for your life). (Ephesians 4:22),

Paul is inviting us into something wonderful. He says we can invite our old self to stand aside, our old helpers forming the soul of our human nature and trying to drive our life with these old attitudes and habits. And welcome home the new creation self that is created after the likeness of God, aligned with his heart and devoted to him.
God says, you aren't that old image with that deficient soul. You are in Christ, you are a new creation, and I want you to know who you are and I want you to live your new life as I created it to be lived. This is a determination of God and we no longer need to get in the way. Each part of our orphan spirit’s heart that has been wounded can now be healed.
Every lie that we've wrongly believed about ourselves is now able to be corrected and brought into line with God's idea of who we truly are. Whatever other people's negative ideas have done to us to devalue our true worth are erased by faith.

That life changing process becomes the way of life. It becomes the way of discipleship to Jesus who knew how to be still and know his Father’s ways and his guidance and direction. But for that to happen we need to embrace that same practice of being still and knowing God. The next module of the series is all about that. It is called the Practice of Presence Prayer.

When Christianity became Christendom in the 4th century the church became political and warlike and financially rich and powerful with a form of godliness but denying the power thereof (2Timothy 3:5). However there remained (and still does) a silver river of redemption, a river of life flowing through dedicated Godly men and women who gave themselves to contemplative practices and the Scriptures and pastoral care and teaching that were modelled by the early Church Fathers.
This river has been flowing over all those hundreds of years, and I will be sharing the Scriptural foundations of that transformative way of receiving the salvation and healing of our souls and becoming a life-giving Spirit.

Paul O’Sullivan – pauloss@me.com

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SALVATION OF THE SOUL AND THE JOURNEY TO FREEDOM

I’m continuing in the six part overview of the course salvation of the Soul and the Life Giving Spirit – this is number five. It is designed to be presented in interactive small groups and that is happening – It is not just a Bible study. However, I am doing the overview as sermon podcasts so that I can make my Scriptural position of the salvation of the Soul clear for the sake of accountability.
We spoke last week about how Adam and Eve had felt forsaken and had misread the nature of God – not thinking or believing that they were loved and not able to trust him for their lives. They created helper parts in their souls – covering up - and the blame game - the woman You gave me – even God was blamed! The human soul was now on its journey of creating countless self-protective and defensive and self-rescue strategies that would become activated in every person to be born in the earth.

Those first unhelpful helper parts were created in the Garden of Eden because of a feeling of perceived forsakenness - but they were not forsaken – God does not forsake us. I will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6. Hebrews 13:5).
Even Jesus had to briefly go through the feeling of forsakenness in his soul for our sakes on the cross but in his spirit, he knew he was not forsaken. He never departed from God, even while feeling forsaken but instead, he turned to scripture, quoting Psalm 22, demonstrating a path towards hope and victory through faith amidst pain. And every person ever born goes through feelings of forsakenness, whether real or perceived because it may or may not be intentional. Forsakenness sums up the human emotional pain felt in such experiences as feeling abandoned, deprived, overlooked, rejected, mocked, physically mistreated, unjustly judged or criticised, and many other negative experiences. It brings about a deep sense of separation, vulnerability, and lack of connection.

In childhood, we don’t have the wisdom or insight to understand why hurtful things happen or are said to us so we come up with the best self-protective strategies we can to avoid that kind of pain in the future, and those things get locked into our souls as helper parts early on. The problem is, they don’t grow or mature with us. We think life will improve as we get older, but those old strategies stay stuck at the age they were formed.

That’s why we’re looking into the healing of the soul because many of us carry this deep sense of spiritual forsakenness from childhood onwards, even if no one meant us harm. Just the perception of it is enough. These coping strategies, though immature, helped us survive. They became part of who we are—how we show up in relationships and how we see ourselves. But often, we don’t realize we’re just replaying old patterns. They feel automatic, like they have a life of their own. So we don’t engage with them as evil, because our spirit created them in a time of naivety, but we need them to stop driving our attitudes and behaviour, and remember, our human spirit knows them. So who can help us see what’s really going on? We’re not all psychologists—but God is and His Spirit knows our spirit, and He understands our wounds. That’s where healing begins.

We also spoke last week about David talking to his soul in the Psalms and talking about his inner bodily and spiritual parts and how they affected one another. He said in Psalm 32:3 that when he kept all his anxieties and guilt inside, his bones grew old, and his body dried up and he felt emotional stress.

I have seen it to be the case that when a person’s determined helper part gets into reaction to something difficult, they also sense a bodily reaction that can be automatic and subconscious. It can be in the chest or the stomach or the throat or the head – or appear as exaggerated movements or overwhelming fatigue. That illustrates that just as our spirit knows what we have experienced in our soul, our body also holds this unique information as a sensation of some kind. A psychotherapist called Bessel Van Der Kolk has written a good book on this called ‘The Body keeps the Score’. He describes how our brain and neuronal system were created to be wired in this way to be physically ‘triggered’ by an inner distress. Each oe of us have our own individual triggers.
I spoke to a fellow whom we will call Reg two or three years ago regarding his stress and anxiety after suffering a physical and emotional collapse at work where he had a panic attack and thought he was having a heart attack. (This is a blend of two people’s experiences with names and other details changed for anonymity) He was put into rehab for weeks and even though he could walk and exercise under supervision he had difficulty recovering mentally and emotionally - or spiritually, even though he was a strong Christian. I knew Reg and respected him as a very successful management consultant who had worked at instructing in management systems and health and safety and managed teams to reconstruct damaged areas after natural disasters.

He said his nature seemed to have changed. He had become irritable at people and resented having to stay in rehab being told what to do next – when to shower, when to eat, what to eat, how far to walk. I said – That’s not like you at all – not the Reg I know.
He said – ‘Oh but it is, that difficult person is there’. He told me how he felt blocked spiritually and was fearful of having another panic attack and was often very confused.
I asked Reg if he felt physical stress anywhere in his body when the mental and emotional distress hit him. I’d suspected it might have been in the chest, but he said no it was in the throat where he would choke up and lose his voice. So I asked him how long he had been experiencing that choked up feeling. He said a long time. He sat in silence for a while and then he said ‘When I was ten years old at school I was told by the gym master ‘You will never be anything like your big brother – you’re disorganised and can’t be trusted with peoples safety. It was because I didn’t set the gym up properly that week. My older brother was a good gymnast and always set the gym up to perfection. The gym master said no more gym for you this term.
Reg felt humiliated and extremely hurt and misjudged. He said that when he tried to explain that it was because he had had to set up on his own because the other boy who should have been helping him hadn’t turned up. But his throat choked up and he couldn’t talk. He promised himself nothing like that would ever happen to him again and he would prove to the gym master and himself and everybody else that he was as good as his brother. He decided to take command of his future and learned to be prepared for any unforeseen event and be able to fix or manage any problem.
It was then I realised that Reg had created a controlling helper part in his soul at that point in his life.
Reg found that not being in control of what he could and could not do at the rehab centre had brough all this back. His fear of failure had created a controlling manager helper that drove his life – his very successful life, but it robbed him of the peace of God when under pressure to have to solve every problem and foresee every disaster.
His spirit and his body had just shown him what his soul was up to, just as David spoke to his soul and asked God what was happening in his soul. David only had the Law to help him reorder his soul (Psalm 19), but Reg had the Holy Spirit, and with prayer I was able to encourage him to speak to his soul. Reg spoke to the little ten year Reggie who in his immaturity had devised the best strategy at the time of coping with the feeling of inadequacy and of being unjustly judged. Reg who had created that helper part at ten years of age then asked that unhelpful helper part to step aside after all that time and to allow the Holy Spirit, the true Helper to show Reg how to let Jesus take his burden of fear and panic of not being in control. Reg gave himself to that and God began to speak to him in many different ways and his life changed. His gift of wisdom and management remained but now it was in God’s hands and not his. That was not just repentance from sin – hamartia, it was repentance to life as in Acts 11:18 where the Apostles realised that God had not only granted the Gentiles repentance from sin but had granted them g ‘repentance to life (metanoia zoe).

I want to give you some examples of Helper Parts: See which ones you recognise!
Inner critics: constantly reminding of inadequacies and the need to work harder.
Caretakers: shielding from harm.
Controlling managers: trying to organise tasks to avoid failure.
Performance helpers: impressing oneself and others.
Pushy helpers: driving us to work harder
Blame game helpers: getting out of trouble.
Rescuers/escapers: avoiding the harsh reality of overwhelming burdens. These are more tenacious and addictive than other helper parts.
These are viewed as common categories, but the specifics of each person’s helper parts are unique because each individual has a unique spirit, with unique talents, gifts and characteristics and circumstances.

The ultimate goal is for individuals to become ‘the real person’ that God created not just in his image, but now being transformed after his likeness, and able to embody that likeness in his world. And this aligns with God's desire for us to live in agreement and relational wholeness. God communicates with us and heals us as individuals in highly personalised ways, acknowledging that each human spirit is uniquely and individually created. While there's "one truth" about who we are according to his word, that word will be transmitted to us by the Father and by Jesus and by the Holy Spirit in their own particular way of communicating their word to us.
God the "Father will demonstrate it outwardly" through circumstances, Jesus will "speak the word of life, the logos" (the designed destiny), and the Holy Spirit will communicate that truth in a language and framework suited to each person’s personality and their God given unique gifts and abilities and particular temperament.
I encourage people to ask God to speak to them about identifying their unhelpful helper.
I do not do a lot of follow up because when a person takes the responsibility to participate in the healing of the soul through the Spirit they are committed to hearing God speak into their spirit to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus as the saviour of their soul, in their personal and unique situation as a child of God. They then receive faith and grace to become yoked to Jesus and allow him to take that burden in the situation.
Then group discussions bring clarity and understanding and encouragement through personal testimonies of faith in a safe and caring environment. (James 5:16 saysacknowledge your faults (helper parts) to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed). To be continued. Paul OSullivan – pauloss@icloud.com

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THE HEALING OF THE SOUL AND ITS HELPER PARTS

Why does the soul need to be healed/saved soterion?

We have discussed the fall of Adam and Eve and how the serpent convinced them that they could eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge and they would not die. He sowed the suspicion in them that God forbade them to eat of the tree because he did not want them to become like himself and come into his own likeness by knowing good and evil. The lie of the serpent was that God was withholding something from them that would make them become like God. In their naivety they believed that lie and disobeyed God perceiving that they had been forsaken by God, and they immediately felt separated from God and felt guilt and fear and shame.

They had created in their once blameless and innocent souls a mindset of separation and isolation from God. Their souls were filled with fear and guilt and shame for the first time. They acted out from this newfound ‘otherness’ and become defensive and self-protective. They covered the shame of their nakedness, and they felt exposed and vulnerable. Father God called out Adam’s disobedience and covering up - and Adam put the blame on Eve for offering him the fruit of the tree in the first place. When God called out Eve, she blamed the devil for beguiling her. Their separation mindset had ‘orphaned’ their spirit from God. The enormous cosmic consequence of feeling deprived and forsaken by God set in place a mindset of separation from God for all of humanity.

Adam and Eve had just created in the soul of humanity two alien parts in their now damaged souls that had never existed before. The first new part was covering up their sin – and the word for sin used by Paul in Romans 5:10 for sin entering the world through Adam is harmartia and that word for sin appears 173 times in the Bible. It means missing the mark. They were the first of the rest of humanity to miss that mark, except for one man Jesus. They had misread the nature of their God – not thinking or believing that they were loved and not able to trust him for their lives. The second new part of their damaged souls was the blame game – the woman You gave me – even God was blamed!
The human soul was now on its journey of creating countless self-interested defensive and self-protective strategies that would become activated in every person to be born in the earth. The relationship between the human spirit and the soul became conflicted and disordered concerning what was right and wrong and good and evil - the conscience was damaged. And once the relationship between the human soul and God was damaged the relationships between the souls of people towards one another were also damaged. The once Godly responses of sacrificial love and trust and agreement became a burden and a struggle – it now became ‘what about me?’
Jesus was the only human being who did not create one self-protective or defensive or self-promoting part in his soul. Only he could remedy this disaster, so we have just seen the horrible dilemma for the souls of mankind for the rest of time, and we have just seen the magnificent answer for the salvation and healing of the soul of mankind. Jesus would one day become the saviour of the soul - from age to age for all of humanity.

I will be calling these self-created soul parts like covering up and the blame game, and other dfence mechanisms ‘helper parts’. Today we will just identify some common helper parts and next time we will look at the process of their formation and identify more specific parts of our soul and see how they become ingrained and lead to us missing the mark of finding God’s will in many issues of our lives. We will find that these helper parts turn out to be what I will call ‘unhelpful’ helper parts. We all start forming these helper parts in our soul at an early age as we acquire and cultivate the separation mindset that darkness has engineered and weaponised in the soul of mankind. These unhelpful helper parts cause so much unnecessary suffering in our lives - and regretfully in the lives of those in our world that we care for.

But just one more spoiler alert – some good news – great news - Jesus told his disciples at the last supper that he would not leave us as orphans but that he would send us ‘Another Helper’ - the Holy Spirit, who would lead us into all truth. He said that the holy Spirit would take the things that Jesus would be saying to us and reveal them to us. (John 14:16-18).

I will be using the terminology of parts in this course to describe how just as we have three major parts in our being, the spirit and the soul and the body, each of those three parts are also made up of parts. We have just discussed the helper parts of our soul, and we saw in the earlier teaching that our spirit is made of two parts, the mind and the heart (Hebrews 4:12) and we also observe that our body is made up of many many parts. The Bible was describing our parts thousands of years ago in the Old Testament, where David in the Psalms speaks of his outer and inner body parts as well as his inner spirit and soul parts. For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Psalm 139:13.
David also knew God’s heart towards his spirit and soul. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts You will make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6).

We are actually all familiar with the concept of our differing inner parts that would appear to be in conflict with each other. For instance, our spirit and soul is made up of our mind and our heart and if we were deciding whether or not to purchase something like a car, we could find that our heart could be saying yes - that’s for me! But our mind could oppose that desire and say ‘What about paying the mortgage?’ We live with this subconscious polarity and find ourself saying ‘what part of me made me say (or do) that?

When the mind and the heart of our spirit go through hurtful or harmful experiences at an early age our immature and often innocent spiritual self creates defence mechanisms and self-protective or self-advantage mechanisms to cope with the emotional or mental distress. Our immature self then sends an insufficient version of who our true spiritual self is (our genesis self’ – James 1:23) into our soul as a tangible part of our reality of who we are and how we behave. I would call that a shadow self that gets bonded in our soul and that shapes an untrue version of the spiritual self that God created us to be. Unfortunately, what we see in real life relationship is that peoples’ soul parts are responding and reacting to other peoples’ soul parts.

But the next good news spoiler alert is that the Bible tells us that our spirit knows every distorted or disordered part of us that has been created in our soul, and even in our body through harm or trauma or mishap.
For what man knows the things (ta – the parts that make up the whole -everything) of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? (1Corinthians 2:11).
The Bible also says in the Old Testament, The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD,
searching all his innermost parts. (Proverbs 20:27).

In this course we are going to find that the mind and heart of our uniquely and individually designed spirit made in the image of God hold the blueprint of the logos designed Word of God that created us for his designated will and purpose (genesis self).
We do not have to lived trapped or stuck in a disordered soul but we can receive an understanding of who we really are and understand why and how we devised our unhelpful helper parts in the first place. The Holy Spirit is yearning to give us the understanding of what Jesus has to say about our orphaned spirit and how we can replace the unhelpful helper with the true Helper of the Holy Spirit. This becomes a journey into freedom.
At last we can begin to take responsibility for the soul we have formed and see it sanctified and set free. We can actually become participators in the salvation and healing of our souls with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and identify and replace the unhelpful helpers with the Divine Helper and begin to do the Father’s will for our lives. We can begin to live a life of purpose and meaning designed for us before the foundation of the world. To be continued.

Paul OSullivan – pauloss@me.com

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THE SALVATION OF THE BODY AND SOUL AND SPIRIT

In these teachings I am attempting to lay down the Scriptural foundation and the way of putting into practice the course that is now available and which I have called ‘The Salvation of the Soul – and the Lifegiving Spirit’. As you will see on the Youtube and read in the course booklet, the course is based on the Scripture in 1 Peter 1:9 Reaching the goal of our faith the salvation/healing (soterion) of the soul, and another foundational Scripture is 1Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit’.
The healing and salvation of the soul involves the interaction of our spirit and soul and body that are designed by God to work in harmony with one another and in alignment with God’s will and purpose for our lives (1Thessalonians 5:23). Ephesians 1:4-5 makes it clear that God’s pathway of our soul being saved takes us on to his predestination purpose for us, which is for our whole being to become the expression of his life-giving Spirit into our world around us.
We have observed the difference between salvation in the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament the choice was for Israel to obey the Law and Commandments and be protected from their enemies and materially blessed. In the New Testament the goal of our faith was salvation for the soul and the blessings were spiritual rather than material blessings (Ephesians 1:4).
Today I will be discussing the fact that each of these three parts of us, our spirit and our soul and our body goes through a different stage and mode of salvation. My headline summary would go like this; ‘Our spirit has been saved, our soul is being saved, and our body will be saved at the return of the Lord’.

The Bible calls our physical body a mortal body (Romans 8:11). That means it is limited by earthly constraints and has been appointed to die (Hebrews 9:27). The Bible calls our body the temple of the Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 6) and as God’s vessels of his life we embody the inner workings of truth and faith into our world in the will of God (Romans 12:1). This is why Paul encourages us to keep our body in check - he says ‘I discipline my body and bring it into subjection’ (1Corinthians 9:27)

The reason that the body is so temporary in this earthly life is because unlike our innermost being of soul and spirit it is subjected to all of the forces of this world. Our outer bodies receive information from the outer world through the five bodily senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. This sense information gets expressed in our soul The soul will respond positively or react negatively to our bodily experiences. David in the psalms commented on this interactive process of our body and soul and he gave glory to God that his body was so fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139.14).

Our physical bodies will be changed in an instant (saved) into a resurrected supernatural body ‘in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal (body) must put on immortality ‘(1Corinthians 15:52). Our earthly body exists for one age – a lifetime, whereas our sprit and our soul have an eternal quality that can progress from age to age and from glory to glory. (The word eternity in the Greek is ai??nios– age to age. In fact the word eternity was only first used in the English Bible by Tyndale in 1526 who translated aenios – age to age into eternity . And he also translated the Old Testament Hebrew word olam as eternity instead of ‘horizon to horizon’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

So our body will be a new body one day. it would be interesting to know what we might look like. ‘Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1John 3:2)(1Corinthians 6:13-14). The supernatural resurrected body of Jesus when he walked the earth for forty days after his resurrection was recognizable. It will be similar with us, but we cannot be specific (it has not yet been revealed what we shall be). Will we look like we are about thirty years old? I have no revelation about this, just speculation. Jesus entered his ministry at around thirty years of age (Luke 3:23), The qualifying for Old Testament priestly ministry was thirty (Numbers 8:24). That was the age of maturity in the Bible. How old did Adam and Eve appear to be when first created? (it has not yet been revealed what we shall be).

So the body will be saved but the Bible says that the soul is being saved (IE a work in progress). “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Corinthians 1:18, 2 Corinthians 2:15).
This describes the work of the salvation of the soul as an ongoing process of faith. It also shows that perishing (appollymi – wasting, being ruined, destroyed.) is also an ongoing process of wasting our time and our ongoing life instead of choosing to work with the Holy Spirit for the saving of our soul.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life ai??nios – age to age life).
Receiving eternal life does not mean just going to Heaven. It means receiving and believing in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus living within us and through us and bringing about the salvation of our soul. By doing this we do not ‘perish’ (appolymi) which means to waste our life in not fulfilling God’s purpose and meaning for our ongoing age to age life.

Then beyond being saved is becoming a life-giving Spirit – and that ‘becoming’ includes our lives being a witness on the earth of the nature and reality of a living God in Heaven.
Nowhere does the Bible say that the goal of salvation is ‘going to Heaven’. The goal of salvation in both the Old and New Testament has never been stated as going to Heaven. The goal of our lives is actively being a witness on the earth of the nature of a living God in Heaven. Israel tried to do that by obeying the Law and they failed. When they chose to obey, they received outward blessings and victories over the enemy and were saved. When they disobeyed, they lost the battles and the land, and they ceased being saved. Our soul starts being saved by receiving faith in the Spirit of life of Christ Jesus and by working out that salvation on an ongoing daily basis (Philippians 2.12). Going to Heaven is going to heaven – there is an afterlife where every soul will be held accountable by a just and loving God – and onlyGod knows how that plays out. Let him surprise us.

So far, we’ve seen that our body will be saved in the future, and our soul is in the process of being saved. But as I said at the beginning our spirit was saved two thousand years ago - for everybody. It happened through Christ’s work on the cross at Calvary – 1Timothy 4:10 because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe. The Bible calls this work of Jesus reconciliation (Greek – katalasso). But the Bible also uses the word reconciliation to mean something different in Matthew Ch 18 for the healing of offenses and disagreements between one another and that Greek word dialasso.
The word katalasso describes the supernatural work of the being of God entering into humanity and the being of humanity entering into Divinity. And Peter also writes about us ‘becoming partakers of the divine nature’ (2Peter 1:4)
The Bible says that this work of reconciliation was sealed for humanity by receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Ephesians 1:5). So the work of the cross brings more than just forgiveness – it gives to every human being the opportunity to experience living as a New Creation in this life by faith through the grace of God in the power of the Spirit. God’s very being has now also become both human and Divine forever - through Jesus Christ.
Why did God reconcile us to Himself?
Because His deepest desire was to unite us with Himself —to live His life within and through us, so we could live our lives within and for Him. It becomes the completion of his circle of love—the very reason He created us in the first place. God didn’t ask our permission. He went behind our backs and did it and he didn’t warn the devil either. He just went ahead and reconciled us to Himself, uniting His divine nature with our human nature through Christ’s death. This was God’s initiative—pure love in action.
Let’s look at a powerful passage from Paul, who understood reconciliation perhaps better than anyone. In 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul writes:
“The love of Christ compels us, because we believe this: One died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”
Christ died for us so we could live for Him by becoming a life-giving Spirit.
Paul continues: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, and entrusting us with this message.”(2 Corinthians 5:18)

This is the Good News: Jesus did not come to condemn the world—He’s forgiving it. Our role is to tell people they’re already forgiven and invite them into the process of ongoing salvation of the soul and then onto becoming becoming a life-giving Spirit.
But this truth remains unknown until it’s revealed to our mind and received in our heart by faith. Until then, our minds resist Him, and our hearts remain in unbelief. We must know—and believe—that our spirit is already saved so that we can receive the salvation and sanctification of our soul. As Paul says “If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God (spirit saved), by the death of his Son how much more, now that we’re reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (salvation of the soul)” (Romans 5:10)
So, we’re not just forgiven—we’re called to become something new: life-giving spirits who bring that life into the world around us. In fact our true becoming in this life is as colabourers with God (1Corinthians 3:9). This outworks itself as the most simple of tasks of kindness and mercy and love and goodness – bringing the fragrance and presence of Christ into wherever we are. Amen – to be continued
Paul OSullivan - pauloss@icloud.com

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THE SALVATION OF THE SOUL GODS IMAGE AND LIKENESS

I am continuing today in the discussion of the salvation and healing of the soul. We have seen that God has created us to function as a spirit and a soul and a body – three parts that are to work in harmony together within each person, and in harmony with the will of God, so that we can fulfill the design and purpose for our lives. We saw that these three different parts of us interact with each another in a predictable and logical way.
The spirit is the life force of us as a human being, the individual and unique essence of who we are – no two human beings are created spiritually identical – not even identical twins. And each person’s unique spirit reflects a shadow of God’s nature - made in the image of God - So God created man in his own image, in the image(selem) of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27).
Our human spirit was created with two parts - the mind and the heart. The mind seeks understanding — what’s true or false, right or wrong — and through that process, we form a conscience. The heart, meanwhile, is where our desires, emotions, and beliefs live. What the mind accepts as truth, the heart embraces as faith. But here’s the dilemma - with so many different minds in the world, there are countless versions of what people believe to be true. And with those truths come just as many belief systems that people place their faith in. So, in practice, truth and faith have become relative values, shaped by the culture, religion, or philosophy that a person grows up in. (36,000 Christian denominations). When it comes to our inner spiritual life, the mindset and heart beliefs of our spirit are expressed in our soul, which becomes the expression of who we are and how we are seen in the world.
I'm just going to stop there because I just said something that I'd like to clarify. I said 36,000 denominations, and which one has the truth and how do we come to the unity of the faith? I'll tell you what it won't be – It won’t be by having exactly the same doctrine on every single verse in the Scripture - it won't be that, but you know what it will be? It will fulfill Ephesians chapter 4 verse 13 that says ‘until we all come in the unity of the faith’ and there will be the one ‘yes ‘concerning the expression of Jesus as the one who is living through us and we will have a different flavour according to our gifts and our persuasions of certain things - that don’t have to cause arguments! It is more like saying ‘that's an interesting perspective’ - but what will be unified is the life of Jesus being seen in his people in the unity of the Spirit because the Spirit is expressed through the soul as who we are. And we come into the unity of that expression as being the life of Jesus flowing like a river through us. So therefore, the soul reflects the conscience and the belief systems and the soul must take responsibility for those choices.
I know that in the denomination I grew up in I had a conscience about not being allowed to eat meat on Friday, and my friends said I was stupid to have that belief - but I did that as unto the Lord because I thought that's what God wanted. And there are many things like that that people do to honour God, and the Bible says in Romans 14 ‘let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind’. People do things to honour God and perhaps some only eat vegetables while others will eat meat - and others will see one day as being the only day of the Sabbath while others will see all days alike - let each one be persuaded in their own mind, says Paul (Romans 141-6). And it says, ‘but don't put somebody in jeopardy to their faith by demanding that they believe exactly as you’. You can do a thing but if they don't have faith for that it is nonetheless the Lord who sees where their heart is.
And Paul said to the people who are able to eat meat offered to idols ‘there's no such thing as an idol’ but he also said but don't flaunt that faith even it's real. So our soul takes responsibility for those choices of faith and love over legalism.
Therefore the soul reflects the conscience and belief systems that we’ve developed ourselves, and so our soul must take responsibility for those choices. Let us go back to the beginning — to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were tempted by darkness in the form of a serpent, and they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were tempted to think and believe that what was ‘good’ meant what was only good for them and not what the absolute good of God was for them. That very choice of Adam and Eve introduced to all of humanity from then on a world of relative values. In other words what is good for me is all that counts. But absolute truth and faith come only from God, who gave us a free will to choose what we believe, and a conscience to guide us toward the good.
The Bible tells the tragic story of how humanity, time and again, chose evil over good - and how that choice damaged the soul and brought harmful consequences to the whole person and to the whole world which was judged at the time of Noah’s flood. So God started over again with humanity but the dilemma remained; How could God remedy this confusion of the meaning of good and evil which causes such great damage to the soul?
What God did was to choose the nation of Israel out of all the nations in the earth to give them the best remedy available for the disabled conscience of humanity. He called a man named Abraham and told him that through him all families of the earth would be blessed. Abraham’s grandson Jacob took his family of 70 Hebrew people into Egypt because of a famine in all the land. They finally became 2 million slaves to Pharoah over a period of 400 years and became the nation of Israel and God had told Abraham he would take Israel back into the Promised Land of Canaan. God then miraculously delivered Israel from slavery to Pharoah through Moses to whom he gave the Law and the Commandments which reflected his relational nature of love and wisdom and goodness. Obedience to these Laws became the way of Salvation in the Old Testament for Israel and God also instructed them to make blood sacrifices for the forgiveness of their sins. These sacrifices prophetically foretold the final fulfillment in the one sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to forgive the sins of the world once and forever.

If Israel obeyed God’s commandments and offered sacrifices faithfully, He would bless them, provide for them, and give them victory over their enemies who followed false gods and lived in darkness. God had also promised them a land through their ancestor Abraham, and He would lead them into it as their Saviour.
But this salvation was only partial—it depended on human nature flawed since Adam and Eve, trying to perfectly obey through sheer human willpower. And when they disobeyed, the blessings stopped, battles were lost, their land was taken, and their souls were weighed down by guilt, shame, and judgment. They had a strange choice – of being saved or not being saved. (And strangely enough we have the same choice of being saved or not being saved – we will discuss that shortly).

There is one Old Testament man, an anointed king called David, whose heart understood the beauty of God’s Law and Commandments that reflected God’s love and wisdom and goodness. Through his devotion to the spiritual truth of God’s Word he experienced the reordering of his soul and he ushers all of us into the understanding of the world of the soul.
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; Moreover by them Your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7-11)
But David was still a lesser separate being who depended upon a devoted but insufficient human nature.

However, God had planned a better salvation in the New Testament that would allow humanity to partake of his Divine nature, and let us look at that promise of God – his big idea of sharing his very life with humanity at an appointed time through his Son Jesus. Genesis 1:26. Let us make man in our own image (selem- a shadow of Godness, as I quoted earlier – all of humanity has this shadow of Godness ). However this verse goes on to say ‘according to our likeness’ (mut – which means an embodied being not just a shadow like selem). In other words, God had already planned from the beginning that there would be a way for humanity to embody the likeness of God.
And Jesus became the embodied being – in him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9). Jesus did this so that we could have his life and likeness dwell within us, and embody his Divinity. And Paul writes about this in 1Corinthians 15:45 the first man Adam became (ginomai – generated) a living soul - the last Adam (Jesus) became (eis – entered into) being a life-giving Spirit. We too enter into becoming a life-giving Spirit.
God had to let humanity in the Old Testament try to save their own souls - just to prove to us that we cannot do it by existing only in the image or shadow of God, we had to come into his likeness and embody his life-giving Spirit.

Jesus brought his Divinity into humanity so that humanity could come into his Divinity.
He sowed his life as a seed into the soil of the human heart by dying on the cross and rising from the dead and sending his Holy Spirit of Life for all flesh (all of us) at Pentecost. All flesh means the guy next door. It has been done – it is finished. But who is going to believe it and choose it and receive the ‘salvation of the soul’? As I said earlier Israel had a strange choice – of being saved or not being saved. And strangely enough we have the same choice of being saved or not being saved – we will discuss that shortly. To be continued.
Paul OSullivan – pauloss@icloud.com

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THE SALVATION AND HEALING OF THE SOUL

Just as God is a Trinity – as Father and Son and Holy Spirit so we as human beings have three parts – a spirit, a soul and a body, and these three parts of us interact together. The Bible says that God desires for our whole spirit and soul and body be presented blameless at the coming of the Lord. (1Thessalonians 5:23).

Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives these three parts of us were designed to work in harmony with one another to achieve what the Apostle Peter calls the goal of our faith – the salvation/healing (soterion) of the soul (psyche) (1Peter 1:9)

The word soul as it is used in modern day language seems to have vague and different meanings for many people. Scientists say that it has no real existence that can be scientifically measured as an entity, and many people simply see the soul as our inner emotional and feeling life – That’s why we have the term ‘soul music’. Plato the Greek philosopher believed that the soul was motivational and appetitive and expressed different inner desires.
But thousands of years before Plato the Bible was very clear about the soul as being the expression of our spiritual life. The word soul Is used three hundred and fifty times in the Old Testament including many mentions by David in the Psalms, which help us to understand the spiritual meaning of the soul. And the soul is mentioned over one hundred times in the New Testament.

Our soul is actually the manifestation of who we really are as the expression of our inner self at any one time in our life. So what is Peter saying when he says that the goal of our faith is the salvation of our soul? And to answer that question we have to go back and look at how our soul came into being. The startling reality is that God didn’t create our human soul as a fully working independent part of our being, as he did when he created our human spirit and our human body.
We find that Genesis 2.7 says the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man ‘became’ a living soul (nephesh).

That word ‘became’ a living soul intrigued me. It implied a process of something coming into being rather than a conclusive creative act of God. But I could find nothing in the Hebrew word ‘became’ to suggest what the process was. It was only when I discovered the Scripture of Paul in 1Corinthians15:45 that I understood how we become the living soul that we become. The Scripture says The first man Adam became (ginomai) a living soul and the Last Adam (Jesus) became a Life Giving Spirit. That word ginomai means to generate, to bring into being, to cause to be. And this has even more startling implications.

That means that we are forming or creating our own self – the self that people see, the self that we think we are and whom others think we are. And that means that we are accountable for who we become - in what we think and what we believe and how we behave. And it is our soul that gets judged on the last day- what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to suffer the loss of his soul’ Mark 8.36. That is why the goal of our faith is the salvation/healing of our soul. That is why the Bible in the New Testament says that we are ‘being saved’ (2Corinthians 2:15) It is a process of transformation and sanctification. Sanctification means more than just a status of personal piety – it means being set apart for a life of purpose and meaning according to the design and will of God.

So how does this process of ‘becoming’ operate? We saw in the opening Scripture that our whole spirit and soul and body are to function in harmony together in the will of God for our lives. God created the first man Adam from the dust (adama) of the earth and then he breathed the spirit of human life into him. These two created parts of humanity receive information that gets expressed in our souls. Our body with its five outer senses and other functional parts send material information to the soul which is then expressed by the soul in some form of response of either pain or pleasure or any other reaction.
The spirit, which is made up of the mind and the heart sends inner spiritual information to the soul through the mind and the heart. The mind of the spirit sends truth or untruth to our soul and the soul responds to that information. The mind and heart of a child may be imprinted with helpful or unhelpful ideas and ideologies or be impacted by helpful or harmful emotional treatment. What the mind receives the heart believes and so the heart sends a belief system to the soul that a person will align themselves to for better or for worse. And so the journey of the soul begins as it receives multitudes of packages of information from both our outer and inner world into our souls to be processed into our becoming who we appear to be.

This is a remarkably complex process but not altogether complicated, because God has designed our unique individual human spirit and body from before the foundation of the world. God had said ‘Let us make man in our own image’ (Genesis 1:26. That word ‘image’ is selem in the Hebrew and it means a shadow – so that everyone from Adam and Eve has been created with this shadow of ‘Godness’ about them with different and unique talents and abilities and personalities. Each person was also created with potential gifts of the Holy Spirit which would come into operation according to their faith in Jesus. Their faith in Jesus and the understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives after the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost empowers a person to release the supernatural power of God’s love and goodness into their world around them.
So how does this soul of ours get saved, and what happened to it for there to be a need for it to be saved in the first place?

To understand that we must go back to the beginning where God created Adam and Eve and see what happened to the soul of man through the assault of satanic darkness upon their human spirit – their innocent but naive hearts and minds. This sum of all darkness appeared to them in the form of a serpent in the beautiful Paradise of the Garden of Eden. God had created Adam and Eve in His own image and they lived together with him as their Heavenly Father, walking and talking together in their paradise. They had been created with an innocent and blameless spirit and a perfect physical body and had begun to ‘become’ a blameless living soul – and it seemed that nothing could be better than this. Their minds were filled only with God’s truth of who he was and who they were, and their hearts trusted and believed in him for all of their blessing and provision.
There was an obvious point of difference between themselves and God, in that they were created beings – of a lower order than God who was Uncreated being like no other being. God was perfect in all his ways as Father and Son and Holy Spirit and humanity was less than perfect, of a lower order of being. But for a time of blameless innocence they would have felt ‘at one’ with God, just as a baby child feels with its mother and in a place of satisfied agreement that all their needs were being met, and not yet recognizing themselves as separate with a sense of separation. But in each person’s life that point of differentiation occurs as a necessary matter of reality, when one ‘I will crosses another ‘I will’

And this awakening of differentiation for Adam and Eve was brutal as the serpent exploited their innocence and naivety and crushed their innocent spirits. He himself fully understood this point of differentiation and knew himself as a lesser created spiritual being as God - and he hated it. That is the evil sin of covetousness.

Then Satan, this dark spirit being who had realised that point of difference - of being of a lower spiritual order than God, in his deception and pride coveted the status of being as God. He wanted to be in God’s very likeness. How deeply did his covetousness fill him with resentment and hatred for these puny human beings about whom he heard with outrage in his heart the words of God saying about them ‘let us make man in our own image… AND here I would like to complete that verse which adds ‘in our own LIKENESS’ (not just ‘selem’ – image -but ‘mut’ - likeness – a three-dimensional substantial God-like being. To this statement about humanity coming into the likeness of God Satan said ‘No it would not happen, for this is what he coveted with all his heart.
In Isaiah Ch 14 Isaiah speaks about the will of Lucifer as the five ‘I wills’ of Satan.
How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit. (Isaiah 14:12)

It would be Jesus as the One who was set for a time yet to come in God’s plan for humanity to fulfill those five ‘I wills’ in the will of the Father. Jesus would come in the three-dimensional substantiated likeness of God as God and man and sow the promises of those five I wills for his beloved humanity. Jesus would turn those five ‘I wills’ of the selfish Satan into the five humble I wills’ of his five wounds on the cross. The bible says of Jesus For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:9). Jesus would sow his life as a seed into the ground – a seed that would not abide alone but that would bear much fruit – the fruit of his resurrection. He would send the Holy Spirit of the life of God in Christ into a humanity that would bear the fruit of his life within them. This would be their salvation – the salvation of the soul – the healing of the soul that would one day be presented to him blameless. This is what predestination means – destined to be transformed into the likeness of God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

In order to understand what the process is of the goal of our faith as being the saving of our soul we must go back to see the tragedy that happened to the soul of humanity in the Garden of Eden when mankind asserted his ‘I will’ against the Father’s will through the deception of the serpent. We will then get an understanding of the plan of the healing and the salvation of the soul that is waiting for us to enter into by his loving grace and the gift of his faith through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I will be speaking further about these things – to be continued. Amen.

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THE REVERSAL OF THE WORLD AT PENTECOST

Acts 1:8 you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Jesus is making a prophecy here about the cosmic reversal of human history, culture, morality and spirituality. He is saying that from this time forth a new era of spiritual activity would begin in the earth whereby every human being who believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the risen Christ could live as a New species of being – a new Creation. They would become conscious of the Spirit of the life of Jesus being joined to their natural human spirit – a reversal of natural human existence to Divine spiritual existence.

He was also reversing the witness of himself as God in the earth. Israel was once that witness. Israel had been the living proof on earth that there was a God in the heavens – God doing miracles of provision for them and giving them the Promised land of Canaan. And for Israel to be that living proof they had to obey his commandments and perform his sacred sacrificial offerings.
But now there was a new witness - a new living proof on the earth that there was a living God in the Heavens. This was to be the lives of sacred power in those who believed in the resurrected Christ that displayed and glorified the nature of a loving forgiving God in the Heavens.
Jesus was also prophesying the reversal of spiritual power in the Heavens that would give believers in Jesus the fulness of spiritual power over the principalities and powers and demonic forces in the nations of the earth and in their own personal lives.
Pentecost was also a direct reversal of the Tower of Babel. Spiritual corruption had occurred at Babel where the earth was divided into seventy nations (named in Genesis 10), because of their rebellion to God. The language of their one native tongue was divided into various unintelligible languages so that they could not communicate and understand each other. The miraculous ability of the disciples at Pentecost to speak in different tongues (languages) allowed Jews from every nation to hear the gospel in their own tongue, overcoming the chaotic dividing of languages that occurred at Babel. Even the word ‘divided’ in the phrase regarding the "divided tongues of fire" over the heads of the disciples is the same word diamaridzo that describes the division of nations in Deuteronomy 32:8. At Pentecost a new language of the Holy Spirit united humanity unto Christ through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit – We will now read the account of the Day of Pentecost from the Book of Acts.

Acts 2:2-12 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
The Crowd’s Response
And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?” Others mocking said, “They are full of new wine.”
But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: (Joel 2:28–32) ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; I will pour out My Spirit in those days on My young men and on My young women; And they shall prophesy, and the young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

That entire section of Joel’s prophecy has come to pass for all of humanity and is now actively being taken hold of by faith in those who believe in the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’. This happens when a believer acknowledges that they are empowered by the Holy Spirit of God to be led into all the truth that Jesus has spoken in his Word and is now speaking today into our lives and we are spiritually empowered to fulfil God’s will and the requirements of the Commandments

In Jewish tradition Pentecost (Shavuot) is also celebrated as the anniversary of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. This perspective emphasizes the ongoing significance of the law and its continuation in the covenant with God.
Pentecost is the fulfillment of the promise of a "new covenant" where God would write his law on the hearts of his people. This contrasts with the giving of the law on stone as the Old Covenant.
In both events God gave His Torah (Law) to His People and in both cases He sealed the covenant that He had made with them. At Sinai He gave the Law written on tablets of stone. At Pentecost, He gave the Law written on tablets of the Heart.

Then comes another part of Joel’s prophecy that has not yet happened historically – but it is seen in the Book of Revelation as part of one of the seven seals which Jesus opens.
The prophecy finishes by describing the cry in the hearts of people in those last harrowing days - urging them to call upon the name of Jesus and become saved. ‘And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.’ And that will bring an outpouring of God’s grace upon those people who finally realise and yield to the awesome power of the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. (Revelation 6:12)
There is also a further implication to the word ‘divided’ in the phrase the "divided tongues as of fire" on the heads of the disciples in the upper room as the same word diamaridzo in describing the dividing of the nations in Deuteronomy 32. It is that those 70 nations whose tongues were divided at Babel and whose names are listed in Genesis 10, went out to occupy different territories in the earth. The miracle of speaking in tongues at Pentecost for all the people of the different nations to understand the Gospel message at Pentecost signifies God's intention to reclaim those nations he had previously disinherited due to their rebellion and idolatry at Babel.
And now the deliberate scattering of these new believers back out to their home nations after Pentecost acted as seeds of the Gospel of the Kingdom being planted among all those nations. Starting in Jerusalem, it extended to Judea, Samaria (representing the apostate northern kingdom of Israel), and even to places with Jewish presence like Ethiopia. The Gospel also reached Philistine cities which were areas outside the original Kingdom of Solomon's control, and Damascus, a location linked to Abraham's early history and Paul’s early history. All this explains the presence of believers wherever Paul later travelled with the New Covenant message. God was reclaiming the territory of the whole earth from the powers of darkness and rebellion into his New Covenant promise for humanity. This became the reversal and reclamation of geographic and spiritual territory of Pentecost. But the reversal and reclamation of territory begins at the personal territory of our own heart – that is the soil of the new territory that God is reclaiming in the earth in these days in which we live.
Taking back the spiritual territory of our own minds and hearts by faith through the indwelling Holy Spirit brings about a maturing of our will into accepting God’s will in all of our circumstances and gives us a new spiritual authority. We rest in a new understanding of the sovereignty of God in our lives as we see both the outward visible reality and the inner unseen reality with clarity and discernment. We realise that no adverse or unexpected circumstances can stop God’s purpose from working in us and through us. We can navigate life’s sufferings of worldly trials and spiritual conflicts with peace and thanksgiving and hope. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18).
We can say along with Paul – I AM WHAT I AM by the grace of God, as a vessel of his Divine will. This is what Jesus meant when he spoke about us receiving the power of the Holy Spirit to be witnesses to Me – our lives as living proof of a living God in Heaven. This the reversal of our new I AM identity at Pentecost. It is no longer about an I AM in reaction to life’s troubles – but an I AM that is co-labouring with God to bless others as we are we are being blessed, and see them redeemed as we have been redeemed, and witness a world being reordered and restored through the power of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
I want to just mention the thought of the reversal of our I Am again. The Holy Spirit convinces our I Am to no longer be content to let us think I am alone and isolated - thinking you’re alone IS not good enough, not for anybody I know including myself. What is great is that you can be yourself with God - you can be yourself getting to know the ocean of mercy that God allows for you to be yourself as a work in progress - and know his continual forgiveness and encouragement. God is delighted that you're even paying any attention to the fact that you are sharing yourself with him. You might say to him - Is that what you are all about Lord? And if you listen carefully you'll hear God say yes that's what it was all about - I wanted you in my life. And then you might ask ‘Why does that bless you Lord? He will tell you that he couldn’t be more blessed than he is in himself but it is for your sake, and I want you to know and to share how good it is to share life without ever feeling being separated and isolated. I want you to share in Our Father Son and holy Spirit's wonderful relationship. God says I did this for you not out of any pressure or obligation but out of perfect love because perfect love has a certain kind of compulsion of overflowing with a love that has to be shared. I want you to assure yourself and include yourself in that because it's for your sake. As you realise this you too will be compelled to share that love with others in your world.

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BONDED TO GOD’S JOY

We have discussed being bonded to God’s love in our mind and in our heart, and last week I shared about being bonded to his peace in times of adversity.
God also bonds us to his joy - not just the joy of having everything going right but getting his joy of overcoming things going wrong. We get God’s own joy that he feels when he sees fear and dread and darkness being overcome in our lives. This is God’s shout of triumph that resonates in our spirit and our soul as we triumph over these things by his grace. This is the point where there is an inner turnaround and new joyful motivation is found to continue conquering and to conquer and reinforcing our motivation to take on new challenges.

Knowing God’s love draws us to him, knowing his peace settles us in agreement with him, but knowing God’s joy takes us beyond being drawn to his love and settled in his peace. Knowing God’s joy makes us move forward confidently in his strength as part of his victory over evil in the world. We were not created to cope with these pressures in our own strength, so the only complete answer is the spiritual joy of God. As David said the joy of the Lord is my strength.

Zechariah prophesies of the last days in chapter nine about God blowing the trumpet for battle and being seen over his people. In chapter ten Zecharia says And he will make them as His majestic horse in the battle. (Zechariah 10:3).
A powerful picture of this majestic battle horse is seen in the book of Job Chapter 39:19.

Have you given the horse strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder? Can you frighten him like a locust? His majestic snorting strikes terror. He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength;
He gallops into the clash of arms. He mocks at fear and is not frightened; Nor does he turn back from the sword. The quiver rattles against him, The glittering spear and javelin. He devours the distance with fierceness and rage; Nor does he come to a halt because the trumpet has sounded.
At the blast of the trumpet he says, ‘Aha!’ and he smells the battle from afar, hearing the thunder of captains and shouting.

We see the same picture of the joy and enthusiasm of the end time Church as Jesus begins riding on a white horse, conquering and to conquer in the book of Revelation Chapter 6.
The background to that is that after the Messenger who speaks to John in Revelation Chapter 3 has given John the letters to the seven churches in that region, he makes this prophetic statement in the next chapter.
Revelation 4:1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show you things which must be hereafter.
That means that everything that is spoken to John from that point on (90 AD) is prophetic for the future of the world in the purposes of God. In Chapter 5 these future events are revealed as the seven seals that only Jesus is worthy to open and as each seal is opened it continues to come to its fullest expression of worldwide, not just local, end time events until Jesus returns and the New Heavens and new earth come into being.
The first four seals are referred to as ‘The four horsemen of the apocalypse’. And these four horsemen speak of present and future worldwide events
That first horseman is on a white horse, which speaks of the worldwide Reformation in 1517 of the Church being reformed from dead works into faith and from doing penance into finding repentance at the time of the reformation.
Reading on in Revelation…
Revelations 6:2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
This is seen as a symbol of God’s joyful and enthusiastic strength in the battle of his people over the forces of evil. We see Jeus here wearing the crown of authority as head over his Church and with a bow in his hand. Judah, you are my bow! Ephraim, you are my arrow! Both of you will be my sword, like the sword of a mighty soldier brandished against my enemies. (Zechariah 9:13). His bow sends us out as his warriors and from the time this battle horse started riding it will continue until is seen as that same white horse at the return of Jesus coming with his saints.

Revelation 19.11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.

King David was a man of battle and had to learn the lesson that it was only by trusting in the Lord who was mighty in battle that he would defeat his enemies. That is why David said The joy of the Lord is my strength. David prayed desperately to God about how his enemies had surrounded him - For I am desolate and afflicted. Bring me out of my distresses! Consider my enemies, for they are many. God hears his prayer and then David says Therefore I will offer shouts of joy in His tabernacle; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD and now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me; Psalm. 27

This joy became an active principle of strength for David, and it can become an active principle for our lives also. We can reverse the flow of our life from our helplessness to our faith in God’s overcoming strength. It was not God’s original plan for us to be on the defensive when it comes to overcoming darkness, but to be on the attack. (2 Cor. 10:4, Eph. 6:12). Constant defensive behaviours cause people to become emotionally fatigued and depressed and robbed of their joy. Even our body has a part to play in this reversal.

When we get emotionally fatigued and depressed and in a downward spiral a hormone called cortisol floods our system causing more stress. But there is another hormone that counters that called dopamine – the joy and enthusiasm hormone which the brain produces and which motivates enthusiasm and achievement - and its even packaged expensively as a recreational drug in the street marketplace. It was once thought that dopamine was produced in the brain because of the motivation for achievement of a goal. It has now been found that it actually gets released not for a goal to be achieved but for a challenge to be met and overcome. It puts us on our front foot to stir ourselves into action and to overcome difficulties and challenges. So even our body helps our spirit and our soul when we enthusiastically praise God as the Captain of the host. It is what causes the battle horse to sniff the battle and say ‘aha’.

We can be transformed from people who avoid life's pressures to those who rejoice and overcome life’s challenges by faith in his strength and not in our own strength. And the Bible says that Jesus will sing and will rejoice over us with joy (Zephania 3)- that is his reaction when he sees us wanting to join with him in what he is doing, sharing his joy and exuberance, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame (Hebrews 12)
The scriptural theme of joy as a source of strength is echoed throughout the Bible, as seen in the life of King David and all through the New Testament. It is God's joy in us that empowers us to face life's battles with unwavering faith, and when we embrace this divine joy, we harness a powerful force that enables us to rise above our struggles and serve others with a heart full of encouragement and compassion.
Paul, in his letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians, underscores the importance of spiritual warfare and the need to be proactive rather than reactive in our battle against darkness. He reminds us that our spiritual weapons are mighty through God for pulling down spiritual strongholds that darkness tries to establish in our minds (2 Cor. 10:4). And he encourages us to stand against the strategies of the devil (Eph. 6:12).
In essence, by trusting in God's joy and strength, we can transform our lives from a state of helplessness to one of victorious faith, always ready to meet challenges head-on and overcome them for the glory of God. This profound truth is a testament to the fact that when we are filled with God's joy, we are equipped to fulfill our divine purpose and extend His love to the world.
Jesus is teaching us here that God’s joy in us is the greatest inspiration to serve and to care for others. God sets this joy before us and knows that when we accept it we get his strength and his endurance to take on the most difficult and challenging tasks.

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BONDED TO GODS PEACE

We spoke last week about being bonded to God’s love and we concluded that knowing we are loved by God and believing we are loved by God is the most deep and profound spiritual thing we can do. It was the starting point of what to know as the ultimate truth of who God is and his goodness toward us and the power of God is seen in his ongoing creative acts of love for us - and when we believe in God’s love we receive God’s peace and God’s joy. Today we are discussing God’s peace and the same principle is involved as with being bonded to his love, which is that what we know as truth with our mind we will believe with faith in our heart.

Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you (focussed on you) because he trusts in you

Let us look at what peace means. In the original Greek the word is Eirene from the word eiro which literally means to be joined as one, and in spiritual terms that means being of one spirit with another person. This is what God wants with us, one spirit with him and one spirit with one another, and that means being of the one mind of truth and the one heart of faith as another person.
Jesus said ‘My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:7).
There is God’s peace and the worlds’ peace – and they are two very different things.

Worldly peace is not really peace. The quest for worldly peace becomes the quest for worldly power. It comes from confidence in our own power base of influence or wealth without feeling threatened about losing it – and that can be a very unstable reality. A nation can feel peace if they have enough of a financial trading and military power base to overcome another nation in a war, but that is also a very unstable reality, depending on what military alliances they form and how much they trust in them.

God himself has perfect peace and certainly has no fear or anxiety about being threatened by any other power.
The Bible says that his spiritual peace and oneness is demonstrated in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit by the perfect spiritual agreement they enjoy with one another in all things. (1John 5:6-7). Jesus wants us to have that peace of spiritual agreement with God.
Jesus does not give us the worldly peace of worldly power, but he gives us his peace, the spiritual power of his love and provision for our lives - and he tells us that his peace overcomes the fear and anxiety in our lives.

That means that we come to agreement with God concerning his overall love and goodness to us even in the times when difficult times come upon us, we will receive his peace. Can we agree that God still loves us and is at work for our overall good to us when difficulties happen? If we say to God that we can no longer agree that he is good or that loves us because of the difficulty we are going through, we may forfeit the peace he wants us to receive from him. I think we all get tempted to think this at those times – why have you forsaken me? But God has said I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)

We live with the constant challenge of discerning the difference between the peace of the world and the peace of God. If we are anxious about financial lack and difficulty, we learn to not look for the temporary peace of the world that comes through street-smart strategies. We pray to God for our needs to be met and we agree that God still loves us and is at work for our overall good to us when in difficult times. But money does not start falling from Heaven - God gives us wisdom concerning employment opportunities or diligence regarding investment or superannuation or plans for applying for a pension or whatever else is in his order for our lives. God doesn’t solve the worldly problems we get fixated on – He meets needs.
There is no word for problem in the Bible but the word need (chrea- lack) is found 52 times in the New Testament. A problem is simply an unmet need, and our human nature tends to allow needs to turn into problems, so we have to reverse that and allow problems to turn into needs – and then we bring the needs to God – and that is prayer. (Philippians 4:6).
Living with needs can be managed in a Godly way that brings hope and trust in God, which often means waiting patiently for God’s timing in things – faith and patience.
God looks after our needs, but we attend to our problems by asking him to meet our need for wisdom or faith or we might humbly look for good advice from someone we trust.

The closest word to problem that is mentioned in the bible was used when Paul said he was perplexed – he didn’t understand why things were not working out the way he wanted them to at the time. But at the same time, he never lost hope.
2 Corinthians 4:8 But we have this treasure in jars of clay (God’s inner unlimited power in our limited human bodies), to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, (under pressure from all sides) but not crushed; We are perplexed (apore?? - no answer to the problem), but not driven to despair. We are cast down but not forsaken – people put him down and circumstances appeared to overwhelm him but he was not forsaken by God.

Paul could have pushed back against the pressure with worldly power, and he could have anxiously analysed the perplexity, and he could have complained about being put down by others. But this is Paul’s testimony of turning outer pressure and turmoil into inner peace. Paul learned the lesson of turning what looked like a problem into a need. He shared his need with God and became anchored in God’s power and love and goodness and that gave him God’s peace. He let the quest for the power and peace of the world die so that Gods inner power could come alive in him. He goes on to say so death is at work in us, but life is at work in you… For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
Paul was describing what spiritual ministry was all about – death in him and life in others. Paul knew that God was strengthening his inner life while his outer life appeared to be more helpless than ever. He never lost hope because he knew that God had allowed that difficulty to happen and that God knew what he was doing, and he trusted God to bring about his good and perfect will for his life ad for those he was serving.

We too will find that learning to live in perplexity but not in despair becomes a doorway into the peace of God. I can have faith and hope that even though I feel helpless he is the helper. Being in agreement with God about who he is and what he does establishes my peace.
When Isaiah prophesied You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is focussed on you he goes on to make this amazing prophetic promise about Jesus establishing his peace within us. LORD, You will establish peace for us, for you have indeed done all our works for us. His death and resurrection accomplished everything for the needs of mankind. That means – Jesus, you will give us perfect peace for you have died to the power and the peace of the world so that we can live in the peace and the power of God – your peace – your power. Jesus is our bond of agreement with the Father and the Holy Spirit and we can learn to live in that peace, day by day. Amen.

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BONDED TO GODS LOVE

As we read the many stories from the gospels, we find that there is one gospel writer, the apostle John, who stands out as the one who was bonded to the love of Jesus from the very beginning. His writings emphasize the love of God more than any other Biblical writings. John wrote the last five books of the Bible, which included his gospel and then his three epistles and then the Book of Revelation.
In his own gospel he even refers to himself as ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’. He was not being proud in saying this - it was simply a revelation of the love of God through Jesus for all of humanity, and so he qualified for that. And in John’s gospel in the story of the last supper when Jesus said that one of them would betray him all the disciples looked at Jesus and said one after another ’Is it I Lord?’ But John was not feeling self-conscious or guilty as perhaps the others did and so he simply said ‘Who is it Lord?’ I’m reading today from the first epistle of John which is totally about the love of God that bonds us to God and to one another.

1John 3:1. Think about how wonderful is the love that has been lavished upon us by the Father, calling us his very own sons and daughters. But realize that the world does not understand us for who we really are, because it does not understand Jesus for who he really is.
2. So, we are now true sons and daughters of God my beloved, and it is not quite clear to us as to what we shall ultimately be like. All we can know is that when he returns we will be like he is, because we will see him for who he really is.
3. And all those who keep this hope and expectation alive will purify the state of their hearts and minds, just as Jesus did.
7. My dear children don't be deceived by anybody about this; whoever is living a life that shows that they are in harmony with Jesus, is living in the same harmony with the Father as Jesus is.
9. Whoever knows that they are part of God’s very life, as his child, will not oppose God outright, because he is born of the same seed, and the essence of God’s life is his life. So he cannot live in hostile contradiction to him because he is part of him.
10. This is how you are going to be able see the difference between those who really are bonded to God as their Father, and those who are still bonded to darkness, in the same way. Whoever doesn’t live a truthful and upright life or doesn’t show love and care and kindness towards others is not bonded with God.
11. And God has been saying to us from the beginning that we must love one another.

John knew how to avoid being bonded to darkness by not letting his mind and heart live in past regrets, or fear of the future, or hopelessness, or resentment, or hostility to others. John knew how to remain bonded to God in his lovingkindness, his expectation of God’s goodness and the power of his might, living in peace and joy and the love of others.
I believe that John would have begun each day by thinking about the love that God had for him, and that his last thoughts at night would have been about the love that God had for him. He knew this was the essence of God’s nature and so he wrote ‘We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them’. And He would have known and understood completely that God had always been the same – unchanging in his love.

What does God want back from us?
He wants the circle of his love to come from us back round to him.
Doesn’t he want obedience?
Yes – but that same apostle John who wrote about God’s love for us said that if we love God, we will keep his commandments – and that doesn’t just mean the Ten Commandments, it means that when we know what he wants us to do we will do it. He said that both in his gospel and in his epistles. Loving God is our will power – rejecting God’s love is our won’t power, so completing the circle of God’s love back to him comes first and everything else comes after that.
So how do we love a God that we cannot see?
That is the work of the Holy Spirit that has been given to us by God and who sheds and spreads God’s love into our hearts so that we will believe it and feel it - it all starts with God.
But before we can believe in God’s love for us we need to know it is true and we can know it as a truth because the word of God tells us that – as we have seen in every line of what has been said today.
Knowing you are loved by God and believing you are loved by God is the most deep and profound spiritual thing you can do because our spirit is made up of our mind that knows and our heart that believes. What we know as truth with our mind we will believe with faith in our heart.

Our body even has a part to play in this because even our brain has been created to help us complete that circle of love back to God that causes us to know and believe his love for us and to do the things that show we love him back. We were created with a left brain and a right brain and those two parts work together so that we can make balanced decisions in our life. Our left brain is in charge of organizing and ordering and giving our thoughts structure but our right brain is more spontaneous and random and creative and colourful. It is jumping into what we want to do rather than calculating what we ought to do. That means that the left brain has to reorder the chaos of the right brain and when that balance anchors our soul, we can do very creative and inspiring things with enthusiasm and faith but it’s based on love and truth and order.

That is why it is good to sit quietly and gratefully acknowledge God’s presence with us and focus our minds on his powerful work on our behalf in the world of the unseen. That is what faith is – believing that God is at work in our lives for our good. Paul wrote to us about being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).
Paul went on to say that It is God working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.(Philippians 2:13). And in the next chapter Paul says that God is able to subdue all thning to himself. It couldn’t be any clearer than that. But if we don’t focus on that and think it and believe it, we are letting the right brain chaos run our lives.
That process is a picture of what happened in the very beginning of the creation of the universe in Genesis Chapter one. The Bible says that there was darkness on the face of the deep (the Abyss) and that it was without form and void (chaos). The Spirit of God hovered above that disorder and the word of truth – the logos of God, spoke and said ‘let there be light’. And then the mighty creative work of God was put into action. That act of creation was an act of God’s love for us, and that creative love in action is what happens when we sit and contemplate the love of God and give it back to him with a thank you. That is when we become creatively changed into the new creation of his likeness and we can do the creative loving of others. This is what waiting on God and contemplation is all about - nothing more nothing less – it is not a waste of time – it is not passive – it is actively embodying God’s love into the world around us.

Let us wait on God and contemplate on actively embodying God’s love to us and into the world around us. Waiting on God is not a waste of time – it is not passive – it is active - and doing this takes practice - in consciously sitting in the presence of God and knowing that he is doing the mysterious work. Driving a car takes practice and you dont have to understand how an internal combustion engine works – it’s a bit mysterious to me. But I know I have to turn the ignition on, put the car into gear and then drive from A to B – and that last part takes the most practice – but we learn and get our P plates and our licence. We become part of the car and it becomes part of us – which is like being one with God who is directing our lives in faith. The Bible says that if we get off track we will hear a voice behind us saying ‘this is the way walk ye in it’ (Isaiah x.x). In a car we look at Google maps and hear it say ‘turn right at the next round about then drive 500 Metres then turn left. And if we get that wrong it keeps talking and tells us to go to the next roundabout and come back to the first roundabout and start from there ‘This is the way - drive ye in it’. That takes faith in our google maps program. Practice sitting with God and he will direct your path and grow your faith and renew your mind - and truth and love will run your life, not chaos and uncertainty.

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A CHILDS FAITH ENTERS THE KINGDOM

I’ve been talking lately about principalities and powers of darkness and the angelic rebellions in the heavens that Jesus overcame for us on the cross. But aligned with that there is the wonderful ministry of the angels who obediently serve God the Father by serving us as his children. God delights to see his children protected and cared for at as early an age as possible. The Bible says that God has assigned angels to help them on this journey of\ the inner life of their souls, as Jesus said to his disciples,
Matthew 18:10 “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.
I don’t yet fully understand how that works but I think a lot happens that we don’t realise is happening.
Our heavenly Father never ceases to see us as his children, but we may cease to honour and know him as our Father. Growing older is not always growing wiser and the reality of having to become mature and independent is a hugely significant responsibility. Fortunately, God allows us to go through our foolishness and our failures and to relearn and to get back on track, and Jesus had to admonish his disciples on one occasion about having to do some of this relearning. It occurred at the same time that he told his disciples to never despise the little children whom they regarded as a nuisance. The little children were playfully enjoying being around Jesus, but the disciples said that they were getting in the way of them getting the most out the serious things Jesus was teaching them. He then taught them the most important and serious thing that they needed to know and relearn – that they had to become like little children. At that time some parents in the crowd had brought their children to Jesus for him to bless them
Matthew 19:13 Then little children were brought to Him that He might lay His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for their simplicity and joy and trust express the kingdom of heaven.” And He laid His hands on them...
Luke adds deeper meaning to this story and quotes Jesus saying ‘Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter into it.” (Luke 18:15).

I want to speak today about a child’s faith that was immortalised in Scripture – the child’s name was Isaac. God had told Abraham and his wife Sarah, who was well past childbearing age that they were going to have a child, and that through that child Abraham would bring blessing upon all the families in the earth (Genesis 18:10). That finally came to pass miraculously, and they were greatly blessed. But then God told Abraham to sacrifice this promised child Isaac on an altar at a place called Mount Moriah. The Bible says that Abraham obeyed God and that his faith was accounted to him as righteous. That means that his faith put the desires of his heart in alignment with the desire of God’s heart.

We are encouraged to learn from the faith of Abraham, who walked up the hill with his son Isaac to offer him to the lord as a blood sacrifice. But something needs to be said about the extraordinary faith and obedience that was shown by the child Isaac who walked up the hill to be sacrificed. As they walked up the hill in the story in Genesis Isaac says to his father ‘look there is the wood and here is the fire but where is the lamb for sacrifice. And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Isaac with a ‘Yes Dad’ in his heart prepared to become that sacrifice on the altar under the knife saying,

Then an angel enters the picture and calls Abraham to put the knife away – that reflects the words of Jesus about angels always seeing the face of the Father for his children. And the story goes on in Genesis to say ‘Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in some bushes by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place The-LORD-Will-Provide’ (Jehovah Jireh - Genesis 22).
Isaac as a child had just as much faith and hope in that resurrection as Abraham, and Jesus knew and undertsood that same child-like faith and trust for himself. Isaac as the son of Abraham obeyed his father and Jesus as the Son of God obeyed his Heavenly Father. Jesus understood what Isaac felt when he himself was on the cross committing himself as a sacrifice to his Father for our sakes as his brothers and sisters and knowing he would be resurrected.

The Bible says about Abraham’s faith for Isaac that Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death"(Hebrews 11:19). This means that Abraham's faith in God's power to bring Isaac back, even if he were to die, was strong enough to fulfill God's promise of blessing all the families of the earth through his son Isaac. This was the first evidence of resurrection life put into action in the Bible. This was not only extraordinary faith and obedience – it was an extraordinary hope - Abraham, hoping against hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations (Romans 4:17).

Abraham faith and Isaac faith is all about the resurrection faith of trusting Father God through the difficulties of life with a ‘hoping against hope’ that our ‘Yes Dad’ in all things brings God’s good will and Heavenly life on earth for our lives. There would have been no resurrection life faith for Abraham to pass on to us if he had not been willing to offer his son Isaac to God on Mount Moriah. And there would have been no resurrection life faith for Isaac to experience if he had not trusted his father, Abraham. There would have been no resurrection life from the dead for Jesus to give to us if he had not offered his life to his Father for our sakes on the cross. And Jesus wanted his disciples to understand what he meant when he said that unless they received the Kingdom of God with that trusting childlike faith, they would not fully enter into the Kingdom in the power of his resurrection. That resurrection only be experienced by us through his death on the cross. Jesus had told them earlier that he was going to be killed and be raised on the third day. The disciples of Jesus did not want him to die on a cross and Peter was speaking for all of them when he admonished Jesus at that time, saying ‘No Jesus, that is not going to happen to you’, and Jesus said ‘get behind me Satan, you don’t understand the things of God, only the things of man’.

Even though the sacrifices of Abraham and Isaac and Jesus were momentous acts of faith and hope Jesus wanted the disciples to know that no matter what the scale of sacrifice was, their ‘yes Dad’ to God’s will in times of difficulty would always supernaturally bring God’s will in Heaven upon the earth. ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ is not just a noble phrase from the Lord’s prayer, it is a true statement of faith and hope from a child of God who expects to see the most difficult of situations turn into an expression of God being glorified, or on display, in their everyday lives. Jesus wants us to experience a life of full spiritual satisfaction as a child of God by seeing ourselves as his brother or sister and being cared for by a loving Father in Heaven. There is a life of childlike faith in most children that trusts that mum and dad are sorting out all of the important things in life for them and fixing everything that gets broken and life works out better when you do what you are told, and life goes on and you presume that you are going to live forever, and most of that thinking changes when we become adults.

When we look at a cross, we see a vertical beam crossed by a Horizontal beam. The vertical beam is the will of God coming from heaven down into the earth, and the horizontal beam is the will of humanity that crosses the will of God. Where the point of crossing occurs is where our will obeys God’s will – that is the place of our ‘yes Dad’. And that point is where the heart of Jesus would have been located when he hung on that cross. That sacrificial act of obedience took his Divinity and humanity into his resurrection glory in Heaven and it included all of us. When we believe in what he has done for us and receive the Spirit of his resurrected life into our hearts we begin to share not only that crossing point of sacrificial obedience with his heart, but we share the resurrection life that lifts us above the earthbound tyranny of the ways of this world.

Jesus knew what he was talking about to the disciples when he spoke about becoming as little children in order to enter the kingdom life of God here in the earth.
An obedient child of God who has a ‘yes Dad’ to God in their heart will hear their Heavenly Father saying to them. ‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, and when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD’, (Jeremiah 29.11) Amen

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THE SEVENTY NATIONS AND GLOBAL SPIRITUAL WARFARE

We are continuing the account of the second phase of the ministry of Jesus, after he said that he was setting his face toward Jerusalem. (Luke 9). Jesus was heading toward the final victory over human sin and corruption by his death on the cross, so he sent seventy disciples to go before him and bring a foretaste of the blessing of the Kingdom of God in his name.
Luke 10:1 towns and villages he planned to visit later.

The Lord now chose seventy other disciples and sent them on ahead in pairs to all the
The number seventy is significant in this story of the ministry of Jesus.
Firsly, it represents the principle of delegation of governmental authority, as also seen in the command to Moses to delegate authority to seventy elders to help him in counselling the people of Israel in the wilderness. And the Jewish Sanhedrin was the delegated authority of the ruling council in New Testament times, consisting of 70 elders, following the precedent set in the Old Testament. In this story of the seventy disciples Jesus was not only heading towards Jerusalem to overcome human sin and corruption on the cross but was also heading toward overcoming all the rebellious principalities and powers of darkness that had corrupted the world throughout the ages.

There were three major acts of spiritual rebellion to be overturned by Jesus when he came to establish his Kingdom.
The first act of spiritual rebellion was by Satan, the angelic prince power who appeared as the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God.
The second spiritual rebellion was by angelic powers just before the flood of Noah in Genesis Chapter 6. And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day Jude 1:6)
The third spiritual rebellion was at the tower of Babel, soon after the flood, where the entire world was divided by God into seventy nations. The people had built a tower that they said would exalt them to Heaven. God divided their languages and sent them out into all the world. Read Genesis Chapter 10 where these seventy nations are named. They all came under the influence of spiritual principalities and powers of idolatry. Many of those nations throughout history had rulers who saw themselves as gods, such as Egypt, and Rome (Caesar is Lord). Canaan and Tarshish (Spain) are mentioned. And in Daniel the prince power of Persia and the prince power of Greece, and Babylon.

Soon after the tower of Babel God called Abram out of one of those nations, from a place called Ur of the Chaldees (the nation of Babylon), to establish the Holy Nation of Israel.
The nation of Israel was ruled by the one true God, and Israel went into battle against many of those scattered nations who opposed their entry into the promised land. Israel finally took the physical territory of the land, but they did not necessarily overcome the idolatry and spiritual darkness that remained in those regions. But Jesus was to come out of and through Israel, and overcome all principalities and powers in the heavens and on the earth.
Jesus was giving these seventy disciples the authority to speak in his name and to confront the territorial powers of darkness that had held power over those Gentile and Jewish places for many generations since the tower of Babel.
Reading on in the story…
These were his instructions to them:
Luke 10:2 “Plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out more laborers to help you, for the harvest is so plentiful and the workers so few. Go now, and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves. Don’t take any money with you, or a beggar’s bag, or even an extra pair of shoes. And don’t waste time along the way. This was a disciplined strategic mission.
“Whenever you enter a home, give it your blessing. If it is worthy of the blessing, the blessing will stand; if not, the blessing will return to you.
“When you enter a village, don’t shift around from home to home, but stay in one place, eating and drinking without question whatever is set before you. And don’t hesitate to accept hospitality, for the workman is worthy of his wages!
“If a town welcomes you, follow these two rules:
(1) Eat whatever is set before you.
(2) Heal the sick; and as you heal them, say, ‘The Kingdom of God is very near.’
“But if a town refuses you, go out into its streets and say, ‘We wipe the dust of your town from our feet as a public announcement of your doom. Never forget how close you were to the Kingdom of God!’ Even wicked Sodom will be better off than such a city on the Judgment Day. This demonstrates the strategic confrontation against the ancient spiritual rebellion that still pervaded the territory.
What horrors await you - cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida! For if the miracles I did for you had been done in the cities of Tyre and Sidon, their people would have sat in deep repentance long ago, clothed in sackcloth and throwing ashes on their heads to show their remorse. Yes, Tyre and Sidon will receive less punishment on the Judgment Day than you. And you people of Capernaum, what shall I say about you? Will you be exalted to heaven? (This echoes the Tower of babel language) No, you shall be brought down to Sheol”
Then he said to the disciples, “Those who welcome you are welcoming me. And those who reject you are rejecting me. And those who reject me are rejecting God who sent me.” When the seventy disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Even the demons obey us when we use your name. ”Yes,” he told them, “I saw Satan falling from heaven as a flash of lightning! And I have given you authority over all the power of the Enemy, and to walk
among serpents and scorpions and to crush them (symbolic of evil spirits – Revelation 9:10). Nothing shall injure you! However, the important thing is not that demons obey you, but that your names are registered as citizens of heaven.”
Then he was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the worldly wise and for revealing them to those who are as trusting as little children.

So the sending out of the seventy disciples was a turning point in the final overcoming of the Kingdom of God that was to be accomplished for us at calvary - a complete victory over evil spirits. When Jesus said he had overcome the world he was not just talking about human corruption, but about the corruption of the world by the rebellion of dark and demonic angelic forces throughout the ages.
And Paul tells us that Jesus has overcome all principalities and powers of darkness – Colossians 2:15 He has disarmed principalities and powers, and has made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them... Paul also tells us that we are seated in our Heavenly position with Jesus far above all principalities and powers. (Ephesians 2:6).

We are living in days when there is much spiritual activity, both of the Holy Spirit and of the powers of darkness that seek to blind peoples’ minds from the light and truth of God. There are Principalities and powers of darkness influencing leadership in the cultures of all the nations of the world at the moment. And there are nations where those powers will not prevail because those who believe in Jesus and his Kingdom choose to live in obedience to God and his Word – and God is fighting for them. On a personal level our offensive weaponry in our direct encounters with the power of darkness is our faith that God is in command of our lives and is fighting for us. We don’t shout at the devil – we have Jesus speaking to us and through us – the one who has overcome darkness for us.
Deuteronomy 3:22 You shall not fear them, for it is the LORD your God who fights for you.
Our defensive weaponry in our direct encounters with the powers of darkness is the saving and protecting power of God through faith in the abiding presence of God the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us to stand against the powers of darkness by ‘putting on the full armour of God’
Ephesians 6:13 Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the times of evil, and having done all, to stand firm.
We are equipped to overcome personal attacks of darkness upon us that are designed to weaken our trust in God and to get us into emotional conflict with others and into internal conflict within ourselves.
14. So stand firm in this way, with a belt that is buckled with truth…
The buckled belt speaks of alertness and readiness to move forward with the truth that defines who we are and where we stand with God. We are confident that we are OF him and FOR him and that he is FOR us.
…and having the breastplate of an obedient surrendered heart.
This is the alignment of our heart with his heart and surrendered to his will for our lives. Our heart’s desires are then safe from the deceitful enticements of darkness.
15. And have shoes on that allow you to walk the talk of the wonderful message of a shared life with Jesus.
We are literally walking in his shoes, standing where he stands and going where he goes. This prevents the enemy from getting us off track with his diversionary tactics.
16. Hold up the shield of faith with complete trust in God. That will stop any flaming missile that the devil hurls at you.
The devil will manufacture the missiles of deceit and malice and aim them at us then fire them through the aggrieved heart of somebody else straight at our heart, where our deepest and most vulnerable feelings reside. Our faith that God knows our heart deflects those missiles and we can trust him to defend us.
17. Wear the crash-helmet of safety that protects your mind from darkness and deception and cut through the lying darkness with your spiritual sword, which is the Word of God.
Our mind is the prime target in spiritual warfare, so we focus and affirm ourselves through his Word and then speak that into our hearts and then into the darkness, and the darkness has to flee. I want to just pass on to you now is how I like to treasure the present moment. I like to wake myself up to the fact that now is now, yesterday was yesterday, 10 minutes ago was 10 minutes ago and the future is in God's hands. Now is the hour, the day, the place that is of salvation - feeling safe - it is now.
So what do I do with my mind in the present moment - what am I to think. I'll tell you what I think - I think ‘this moment Lord is not mine it's yours, you created this moment and you're the one that is actually reordering the entire universe, and you are reordering my world and my mind at this present moment. I don't want to frustrate that grace and fill it with stuff in my mind that's diversionary or negative or fearful or anxious. I'm going to give this moment to you - it's yours. But when I think that moment is mine I may start to think but this moment going to pass away - what happens when this moment is gone? Well what you do you is just say that in this moment I'm going to be looking forward expectantly to see you bringing your future with your good will for my life into my view, and so this moment is just going to have to expand until I see that and say thank you Lord. And I tell you that moment can be a very very long wonderful time! We are in charge of our minds but we practise that over and over again. We don't wait till we're in a crisis and say what was that I’m supposed to do again? No, I continue to get with God and start speaking about what am I doing with this moment now.

Those 70 disciples were set out with discipline – so make that your priority to overcome evil. We are being sent out as his disciples with discipline and the first thing is an ordered mind - a disciplined mind. Paul wrote to Timothy and he said ‘God hasn't given you the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of an ordered mind’.
Thank you Lord for giving us the fortress of your presence that we can overcome all darkness be in alignment with you and speak - and the enemy will flee - in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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FORTY DAYS ON EARTH

After Jesus had descended into Paradise and hades he took the keys of hell and death and re-inhabited his entombed body. He then sealed the offering of his shed blood on Calvary to his Father in Heaven for the purification of the sins of the whole earth. He returned to the earth that same day in a resurrected body that could never ever die again. This resurrected body was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body. After that, He appeared in another form (heteros morphe – an altered form or nature) (Mark 16:9)

Jesus returned to the earth in Jerusalem where he heard that the temple priests had fabricated a story that his body had been stolen by the disciples and that they had overcome the temple guards and raided the tomb. He set off walking from Jerusalem in the direction of Galilee, where he had said he would meet with his disciples. He saw two men walking together in serious discussion and he greeted them and joined them as they walked, but Holy Spirit had supernaturally veiled their eyes from recognizing him (Luke 24:13). They were taken aback that this stranger seemed to know nothing of what had happened in Jerusalem over the last few days. They explained patiently to this stranger the things about Jesus, that he did miracles and that he was a great prophet and how their chief priests and rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified. They said to Jesus they were hoping that it was Jesus who was going to redeem Israel as he had said that he would rise on the third day, and today was the third day.

As they walked the 12 K journey to Emmaus Jesus quoted to them passage after passage from the writings of the prophets, beginning with the book of Genesis and going right on through the Scriptures, explaining what the passages meant and what they said about himself, and something happened in their hearts as they listened to him. They appealed to him to stay with them as they finally arrived at Emmaus, even though he had told them he was going further, so Jesus accepted their offer to at least stay and have a meal with them. During the meal Jesus took some bread, and prayed a blessing over it, and as he broke the bread their eyes were opened and immediately, they recognized who he was and at that very moment Jesus vanished from their sight. This could well be called the firstfruits communion service - a prophetic illustration of how our times of fellowship and communion in remembrance of Jesus open up to us a deeper revelation of who Jesus is as we sit in the presence of God in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

After Jesus had disappeared the two men decided to go back into Jerusalem and find the disciples who were in hiding, afraid of what was going to happen to them because of the rumors that were going about that they had stolen Jesus’ body. They found them and were whisked inside and the doors were locked behind them. They told them of their journey with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and their miraculous meal with him where he had suddenly vanished. While they were still talking Jesus appeared in their midst while the doors remained locked. The disciples panicked, and thought they were seeing a ghost, but Jesus explained to them that he was not a ghost because a ghost didn’t have bones and flesh, and he asked them to touch his hands and his feet and to see for themselves.

Jesus stretched forth his hands and his peace hit their hearts. He breathed his Spirit upon them and they received the impartation of his peace. They immediately felt at one with Jesus and with each other. But this was just a mere foretaste of what was to come, as it would only be after his final ascension and being seated at the right hand of Father that Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell within them. On the day of Pentecost Holy Spirit would be sent from Father and from himself upon all humanity.

He asked them if he could have something to eat, so James brought back some steamed fish and some honeycomb and Jesus accepted it and ate it. Jesus noticed that Thomas was not amongst them and he told them he would see them in a few days at Galilee, and he vanished once more.
The disciples all gathered at Galilee eight days later and Jesus again miraculously appeared to them and this time Thomas was present. He knew that Thomas had not believed that he had risen, even though the other disciples had said that they had seen him. Jesus held out his hands towards Thomas and told him to have faith and believe and to touch his hands and his side where he had been pierced. Thomas did this and said, ‘My Lord and my God’. Jesus acknowledged that in seeing and touching he now believed. He went on to tell Thomas that there would be many who will believe without even seeing him and that they would be greatly blessed for that kind of faith.

Jesus appeared to them again one morning after seven of them had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. He stood on the shore and watched them fishing but they didn't realize that it was him. They had taken two boats out, one larger boat, rigged for catching and one auxiliary boat, which helped with baiting and with the haul.
Jesus shouted out to the fishermen from the shore asking them if they had yet caught anything and they said no they hadn’t. Then Jesus told them to throw out the net on the right-hand side of the boat, and they would get plenty of fish, and when they did they couldn’t draw in the net because of the weight of the fish. Then John called out to Peter ‘That is the Lord’, and at that, Peter put on a robe and jumped into the water and swam ashore. The rest of the disciples stayed in the boat and pulled the loaded net close to the shore. They looked over to where Jesus was, sitting with Peter and they saw that a fire was kindled and fish were frying over it, and there was bread.
Jesus told them to bring some of the fish they had just caught, so Peter went and helped them drag the net ashore and bring some fish. There were 153 large fish and yet the net hadn’t torn. Jesus then invited them to come and have some breakfast and Jesus went around serving them the bread and fish. That was the third time Jesus had appeared to them since his return from the dead.

After they had all enjoyed breakfast together Jesus called Peter aside. He knew there were things that had to be said between them. Peter’s soul was in a turmoil of regrets, shame and guilt. Time and again he had asked himself why he didn’t stand up for Jesus instead of disowning him three times when he was asked if he knew him. He had remembered when the rooster crowed that Jesus had predicted that he would deny him three times. What was Jesus going to say to him now – would Jesus disown him, even rebuke him three times? But Jesus asked Peter three times, in three different ways whether or not Peter loved him. The first time Jesus used the word phileo which means brotherly love and Peter said yes of course he did, and Jesus said to him feed my lambs. Jesus asked him a second time, using the same word, phileo and Peter said emphatically Yes lord – you know I do! And Jesus again said to him feed my lambs The third time Jesus asked Peter if he loved him he used the word agape which means a sacrificial love, higher than any other kind of love. Peter said Yes Lord, and he meant it with all his heart. And this time Jesus said to Peter feed my sheep. And so Peter humbly gave himself up to the ownership of God’s love. As a true representation of a flawed humanity owned by God’s love, Peter was mercifully forgiven and accepted. It was also this moment that owned him, not his past, or his uncertain future.
This would also continue to be his greatest gift to God, the gift of his each moment to God. As Peter would go on in life, he would have faced his many imperfections, and he may well have learned to return to that special moment on the seashore, where he could surrender to the ownership of God’s love and shed his fears, growing in faith and being transformed into God’s nature.

The bible says that Jesus met with over five hundred people over those forty days, and in the book of Acts it describes the final time that he met with his disciples when they asked him if this was now the time for him to free Israel from Rome and restore his people as a mighty nation, and again Jesus realized that they still did not understand the nature of his Kingdom, but that they would soon learn. He told them that only his Father had set these times, and they were not for them to know. He also told them that they would testify about his death and resurrection with great power. He instructed them not to leave Jerusalem and that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit in just a few days and receive the promise of the Father.

Suddenly a dazzling light shone within a billowing white cloud above them. Jesus turned to them all and raised his hands in blessing. He did not need to say goodbye. As he began to rise slowly heavenwards he was enveloped in the cloud, and as they stood together looking into the cloud that had taken him they saw the shining figures of the now familiar two men in white standing to one side who told them that the same cloud that they saw taking Jesus into eternity would also bring him back one day to that same place - in total glory and triumph, and The Plan of Salvation will have been fulfilled.

And so, they waited just as he had instructed them, and after ten days the Holy Spirit fell upon them on the day of Pentecost. Jesus had told them he would join their lives to his risen life and they would become one in Spirit with him. The Holy Spirit would take Father’s love, and his own words, and place them in the hearts of men and women, as a deep consciousness of his indwelling and abiding life.

The Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in the mouth of Jesus, and The Holy Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth.
The Holy Spirit would become the bond between Heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from Heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God.
Humanity could now live in the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and win its struggle against the mindset of lostness and separation called the law of sin and death.
Within the human pain of this struggle against lostness and separation would be found the cry of Holy Spirit wrestling to join the minds and hearts of people to God. It is the Spiritual energy of God’s love that would never cease its activity in the human heart, subduing human nature, that it might resonate with the nature of God. His ministry of intercession is working moment by moment in our lives to bring about the healing and saving of our souls. Whenever this truth is embraced by a human heart, that heart will at last find itself at home, around the Family table, where it was destined eternally to be.

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RESURRECTION AND AGE TO AGE LIFE

As Jesus was dying on the cross he said ‘Father into your hands I commit my Spirit’ The Bible says that he then descended - in his Spirit - on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades. Jesus had spoken about these places when he told the story in Luke 16 of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar. The rich man who lived sumptuously in arrogant self-indulgence all of his life ended up in Hades and Lazarus who lived the life of a humble beggar at the gate of the rich man’s house ended up in Paradise, with Abraham.

Jesus had now descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience. They were locked away from eternity till Jesus would now come to get them. Jesus would also visit Hades the prison of lost hope.

The bible says that Jesus then preached to all those prisoners of time the message of the Gospel, the plan of the Father to send Jesus into the world to set people free from the captivity of sin and to bring his New Creation life to humanity (1Peter 3:19). Jesus would have sat with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and many others in Paradise as well as his newfound friend that hung next to him on the cross and to whom he said, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’! He spoke to with them and he rested with them. He was to wait there until the end of the third day when he would ascend into Heaven and set the captives free. (Ephesians 4:8) from the captivity of time, as they had waited till heaven came to get them. Jesus also declared the message of the Gospel to those in Hades who had resisted God and refused to listen to him, including those who were destroyed in the flood of Noah.
1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them-- spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark.

The Book of Revelation also tells us that Jesus was given the keys of ‘Hell and death’ at this time, and with the key of freedom he was able to unlock those prisoners of the past and take them into an age to age existence to await an eternal destiny.
Revelation1:17,18 Fear not; I am the first and the last: -- I am he that lives and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death.

On the third day when Jesus turned the key of freedom in the prison gate a tremor hit the universe. Power from Father and Holy Spirit in heaven was released into and through Jesus to overcome death and the grave. His resurrection changed the nature of every atom of matter in existence. God had joined himself to his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ and now humanity could become a ‘New Creation Being’, joined in the Spirit with Jesus (2Corinthians 5:14).

The time had now come for them all to leave, and Jesus led some on a triumphant upward journey, to their new home, his home in Heaven, while others to a place reserved to await an age to come. A company of them was escorted by hosts of angels, ascending ever upwards until they first reached the earth, (Psalm 68:18, Ephesians 4:8, Psalm 24)), and there they stopped for a brief period of time, because there were things for Jesus to do there. The first thing that he had to do was to go to his tomb where his earthly body lay in its shroud. The Archangels Michael and Gabriel went ahead of Jesus to the tomb and found the guards there that the temple priests had appointed to stand watch at the tomb. As the angels alighted the ground shook and the massive stone rolled away as a huge burst of lightning hit the place sending the guards reeling headlong to the ground. They leapt up in fright and bolted. Jesus entered his tomb and united himself again to the wounded shell of his body, leaving the shroud lying separated from the headpiece which had been folded away neatly (John 20:7).

Michael and Gabriel waited inside the tomb while Jesus walked bodily from that temporary resting place, out into the garden. He walked about and would have recalled vividly the events that had so recently taken place nearby, and his time of kneeling in an agony of prayer when he accepted his cup of unbearable suffering.

At that same time some women had prepared oils and spices according to the custom, to anoint the body of Jesus. On their way to the tomb, they were discussing the problem of how to move the huge stone that covered the entrance. When they arrived, they were astonished to see that it had been moved and the guards were nowhere to be seen. They peered inside the tomb and were met by the majestic appearance of Michael and Gabriel, sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

‘Are you looking for Jesus?’ Gabriel said. ‘He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.’
The women ran to tell the disciples but one of them dropped behind and walked slowly through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. This was Mary Magdalene. And he called her by her name and said, ‘It’s alright Mary, it is me.’

She ran towards him, but he held up his hand and said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and she shared the things that he had said to her.’ (John 20.17)

And now Jesus had to fulfill the offering of his blood to his Father in Heaven. The blood of animal sacrifice had been offered for the sins of the people by the High priest of Israel in the holy place of the temple for the last fifteen hundred years for the nation of Israel (Leviticus 16, Hebrews 9) but Jesus had just marked the end of blood sacrifice for sin for all time by sprinkling his innocent blood on the ground at Golgotha for the forgiveness of the sins of the whole earth.
Hebrews 9:11 But Jesus came as High Priest of this better system that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world, and once for all took blood into that inner room, the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it on the mercy seat; but it was not the blood of goats and calves. No, he took his own blood, and with it he, by himself, made sure of our eternal salvation.

A strange phenomenon then occurred in Jerusalem. Hundreds of souls who had just accompanied Jesus from below and who had recently died were making the briefest of appearances to their loved ones. And when the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. Many bodies of the saints who had died were raised up and came out of the tombs after his resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:52) After the very brief visit to their astounded friends and relatives on earth in their new recognizable forms, they then had to regroup with Jesus and resume their journey to Heaven (Imagine the strange reality of this spiritual world). The magnificent procession began to ascend from their graves to the sky in glorious splendour with its escort of glorious angels. As their ascension took them closer and closer to the throne room a mighty voice could be heard proclaiming his majestic entrance.
Psalm 24:7-10 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!

At this command the heavenly music began. The sounds of pipes and trumpets, the voices of hundreds of harmonies, and a beautiful range of stringed instruments created a majestic symphony. Jesus had come home, and the Bible trumpets his victorious homecoming.
Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he sustains everything in the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
This was the moment - purification for the sin of all mankind had been made and now everything in the Universe was integrated into his glorified New Creation Being of power. Ephesians 1:19-21. how powerful is that divine energy that comes from God to us when we simply believe that he is the creator and generator of this supernatural power which exploded into reality when he raised Jesus from the dead and took him into heaven to sit next to him at his right hand. 21. This heavenly place and position took Jesus as God and man above any other force or realm of authority that can be named, whether on earth or in the heavens…and he has become the centre of all consequence and meaning in the universe.
All the angels and all those who had come with Jesus on the upward journey beheld their king in his place of honour and joined in the magnificent celebration. His time in heaven for these celebrations was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day, still bearing the marks of the cruel wreath of the crown of thorns from his flogging from the guards of King Herod, and the wounds to his hands and feet and side from the cross.
The reason that Jesus had to return to the earth on that same Resurrection Sunday is that on the Sunday morning after the Passover Sabbath there was another feast that was part of the Passover Feast being celebrated by Israel. This was called the wave offering of the firsfruits – the sheaves or bunches of wheat or barley shoots that were the firstfruits of the harvest season. This festive day of the Passover feast was prophetic of the resurrection of Jesus on that day. The Bible twice declares to be the firstfruits of the resurrection (1Corinthians 15:20,23)
After the Passover Sabbath when you reap your harvest, bring the first sheaf of the harvest to the priest on the day after the Sabbath. He shall wave it before the Lord in a gesture of offering, and it will be accepted by the Lord as your gift… Fifty days later on the Feast of Pentecost you shall bring to the Lord an offering of a sample of the new grain of your later crops. (Leviticus 23:9-15). Jesus became the prime sheaf of the wave offering on that Sunday and the other company of people who also rose and appeared to many people in Jerusalem made up the rest of the sheaf. So Jesus returned to the earth that same day in a resurrected body that could never ever die again. He would now spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection, and meeting with his disciples and being seen alive again by hundreds of people This resurrected body was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body.
The remarkable certainty of how only Scripture can interpret Scripture is seen in this astounding eternal prophetic narrative of the Only One God the Father sending his Only One Son Jesus to bridge the gap between Divinity and humanity - through the sending of the Only One Holy Spirit to all of humanity. This means that there is an Only One way to live life on this earth with purpose and meaning and fulfillment. Any other narrative of life on this earth, no matter what it promises the human soul, is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty and helplessness and even despair. God has lovingly offered us his Gift of life – it is done – it is finished. It awaits our ‘yes’ of believing Him and putting aside any other philosophy or ideology. That is called repentance and faith – Thank you for the Cross Lord.

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CALVARY 2025

After the Last supper Jesus led his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he asked them to sit close by while he prayed. He took Peter, James, and John with him and told them about how much his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death. He asked them to stay close and to share his prayer watch with him. A little farther on he fell to the ground in his agony, sweating drops of blood, and he prayed ‘Father, if it is possible for you, take this cup of suffering from Me. Yet not my will, but Your will be done.’ He returned to find the three disciples sleeping. “Simon, are you asleep?” He asked. “Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so you won’t fall into temptation - your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak. He went away and prayed to his Father again, and again He returned and found them sleeping, and they had no words for him. The third time this happened he said, ‘Are you still sleeping? Enough—the hour has come, so get up and let us go. My betrayer is here. The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Judas then arrived with a large crowd sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people and armed with swords and clubs. Judas had arranged to identify Jesus to the guards by embracing Jesus as the man to arrest and Jesus was then betrayed by a kiss from Judas as Jesus had predicted. Then men stepped forward to arrest Jesus, and Peter drew out his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. But Jesus picked up the severed ear and placed it back on the guard’s ear and he was miraculously healed. Nonetheless Jesus was arrested and dragged away, and this dramatic turn of events was all too frightening for the disciples and they all scattered and ran – just as Jesus had predicted.

Jesus had also predicted that Peter would deny him three times. and it was not long before Peter’s time of trial came to pass where was accused by a woman outside of the courtyard where Jesus was being tried by the priests for blasphemy. The woman said to Peter that he had been with Jesus and Peter denied the accusation three times with curses and swearing and then he heard the dreaded crowing of a rooster. And Peter then knew that what Jesus had predicted he would do in denying his beloved Lord had been fulfilled, and he wept bitterly.

Jesus was then tried and found guilty of blasphemy by the Jewish leaders and then taken to Pontius Pilate to be executed. Pontius Pilate could find no wrong as far as Rome was concerned about Jesus being accused of blasphemy, but the Jewish leaders said that he was also stirring the people against Rome by saying he was the new King of the Jews. And they charged Pilate as being accountable for punishing that by crucifying Jesus as a criminal. Pilate caved in to the crowd because he feared a riot, but deep in his heart, he believed Jesus was innocent, and also that he was their King.

Pilate told a Centurion to arrange for a squad of guards to escort Jesus to Calvary. The already large crowd continued to grow as Jesus staggered and buckled under the weight of the beam but he continued to drag it behind him. It was the custom to write a description of the crime committed on a clay plate and fix it to the top of the cross. Pontius Pilate had written an inscription that read, “THE KING OF THE JEWS”

An angry voice called out above the crowd “Who wrote that inscription? – it’s wrong”, and one of the temple priests had protested that It should have said that ‘He said he was king of the Jews’. However, Pilate had made it very clear to them earlier that he had written that inscription and it had to stay as it was.

When the trek to Calvary was completed, it would take six full hours on Calvary for Jesus to die. Two criminals were already hanging on crosses either side of the hole where Jesus’ pole was to be fixed, but these two men were tied to their crosses, not nailed. Jesus was finally hoisted up and then the pole was crudely dumped into the hole prepared for it, evoking stifled cries of shock and dismay from the crowd. But overriding these noises was the swelling chant of taunts and slogans coming from the crowd. Then the priests and the leaders of the Jews joined in telling Jesus to come on down from that cross and prove himself as the Son of God.

As Jesus hung there the criminals beside him were weakening, groaning in their pain, when one of them turned to Jesus. He now wanted to have his last few words of bravado heard in this dark prison of life and death he had made for himself. “they’re telling you to get yourself down, but how about us? That would be a real miracle, even I would believe you.” He was delighted with the impression this made on the crowd, as they clapped and cheered him. But the man on the other side shouted at him angrily.”

“Are you mad? Don't you even fear God? Don't you know who this is? We deserve to be here, but he doesn’t. He has never done a wrong thing.” He then turned to Jesus and said

“Lord, will you remember me when you are in your mighty kingdom?” Jesus turned his head and looked at him with love, saying “Today you are coming home with me to Paradise.” Jesus looked down at his mother standing next to John and he spoke to her through parched lips.“Mother let him be your son.” His head then turned towards John. “Son let her be your mother.” John stood with her as she watched her son's life draining from him. High noon surrendered to a deep darkness which remained for three full hours. Darkness took over that day in those last hours, and put a stop to some things. Shouts of bravado that just moments ago would have roused bold echoes now hung hollow in the still air, and those mockers that had stood close to the action at the foot of the cross now slid back into the crowd.

The gigantic spirit of Jesus absorbed the full impact of Satan as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the ages to come assailed his being. Thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. The great spirit of Jesus swallowed every vile accusation that Satan hurled at him, and he took them all into himself and locked them safely within his vault of perfect love. He was completely innocent of any one wrong deed. He rallied his strength once more, but another missile of horror careened into him more powerfully and more deadly than anything before. He was living out the prophetic fulfilment of the first verse of Psalm 22 spoken by David. ‘My God My God why have you forsaken me?

’The source of this horrific thought was not Father God. Darkness had assailed the human heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, of the lineage of David, and in an instant, he knew the answer to his question. He had not been forsaken by his Father, but in his humanity, he had experienced forsakenness for a moment, so that no living soul from this time on would ever have to feel forsaken by God again because of their human weakness.

God did not forsake Jesus, and he did not forsake Adam and Eve and he does not

Forsake us. people forsake other people but God does not forsake us. Jesus was always aligned with God's will and throughout his entire life he could identify exactly with what we go through but he never deviated from God's will. The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in all points just as we are, so he was tempted to feel forsaken here just like we would be, as that is a human feeling.

Instead of departing from his Father, Jesus, on the cross begins quoting Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He turns to the Word—to truth itself. Jesus, who inspired the psalm through David, knows the full story it tells.

Though it begins with a cry of abandonment, the psalm moves from hopelessness to hope, and finally to praise and gratitude. There’s a shift amidst the pain and chaos of mocking and the dividing of garments where Jesus proclaims the turning point and what began in sorrow ends in victory. Jesus declares in the psalm “I will praise you in the great congregation; I will sing your praises among my people.”

This shows that Jesus never departed from his Father in spirit. That connection strengthened his soul. He faced every temptation and triumphed—not by escaping pain, but by holding fast to truth. His journey shows us how to move from feelings of abandonment to faith, from despair to healing. We are not alone. We walk the path of restoration with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—not separated, but deeply united.

Jesus had something more to say but his throat felt parched so a soldier put a sponge up on a pole to Jesus, who could now say loudly and clearly what had to be said in his last moments “Father into your hands I now offer my Spirit.”

Then in one last gasp he shouted loudly for all about him to hear. “It is finished!”

Then he died. And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed. An earthquake tore a searing gash into the mountainside and people were toppled off their feet. Rocks split apart and the graves and tombs on a nearby hill cracked open. People ran in fear from the place, but they did not know where to go. At that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb, and when their knife pierced the sacrificial animal the true Lamb of God offered himself on Calvary as the final sacrifice for all sin. The priests were thrown off their feet by the earthquake. The temple shook as huge stones fell from the parapets and the great veil in the temple proper which separated the place of God’s presence in the holy place from the rest of the temple, was lightning torn, top to bottom.

When that veil was torn it signified that Christ as both man and God had not only done away with the separation of mankind from God in the temple, but he had done away with the separation of mankind from God in all the earth. He had gone ahead for all of us to live in his abiding presence. We can now have faith to come confidently into this holy place in our own hearts because of his mercy upon our imperfect humanity and we can receive the power of his life within us to do what is right and pleasing to God.

The veil that was torn when Jesus died on the cross on that awesome day was a declaration of the certain hope of our salvation and loving forgiveness and has become the anchor for our souls.

The moment Jesus died the cosmic law of sin and death was being overturned to make way for a new cosmic law to come into effect - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and that new cosmic law did not exist in Eden with Adam and Eve. It would occur only after Jesus rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to give us the risen life of Jesus within, and a new heart like his own. Our hearts can now be fulfilled with a new desire that freely chooses to fulfill the desires of God’s heart.Thank you, Jesus, for overturning the law of sin and death, and for giving to us the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. May we enter through that torn veil and live that life with your heart towards the Father. Amen

Paul O’Sullivan – pauloss@icloud.com

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PREPARING FOR THE PASSOVER
After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead Caiaphas the High Priest unintentionally prophesied that Jesus’ death would not be for Israel only, but for all the children of God scattered around the world, and from that time on the Jewish leaders began plotting the death of Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus then stopped his public ministry and left Bethany, near Jerusalem, and went to the edge of the desert, to the village of Ephraim, and stayed there for a while with his disciples before returning to Bethany. Reading on now in the next chapter of the Gospel of John.
John 12:1 As the Passover approached, many people came to Jerusalem early for the cleansing rituals, and in the Temple they whispered, “Will Jesus come?” And hearing this the chief priests and Pharisees warned everyone to report him so they could arrest him. Six days before Passover Jesus arrived in Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom he had raised from the dead. A dinner was held in Jesus’ honour and while Lazarus reclined with Jesus Martha served, and Mary came and poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair, with the fragrant aroma filling the house.
Judas Iscariot objected to Mary doing this, pretending to care for the poor, though he often stole from the disciples’ funds, and Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She’s preparing me for burial. The poor you will always have with you, but not me.” Crowds gathered, wanting to see both Jesus and Lazarus, while the chief priests even plotted to kill Lazarus, since many were believing in Jesus because of him. The next day, news of Jesus’ arrival spread, and as Jesus entered Jerusalem for the Passover week the whole city was stirred. People in the crowd were saying “It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee, and the large crowd came out to meet him waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosannah. blessed is the King of Israel!”
Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a young donkey, fulfilling the prophecy from Zechariah: “Don’t be afraid, people of Israel. Your King comes, riding on a donkey’s colt.” But the disciples only understood this later, after Jesus was risen in glory.
Jesus then went into the Temple into the court of the gentiles and drove out the Temple money changers, angrily overturning their tables while they were selling doves at exorbitant prices to the visiting Jewish pilgrims. He said, “The Scriptures say, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you’ve turned it into a den of thieves!” And the blind and the crippled came to him in the Temple, and he healed them, but when the chief priests and religious leaders saw the miracles and heard children shouting, “God bless the Son of David!” they were angry. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked Jesus. “Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you read the Scriptures? ‘Even children and infants will give praise.’
Those who had witnessed the raising of Lazarus spread the word, which drew even more people, and the Pharisees were getting desperate and said, “We’ve lost, everyone’s following him!” Some Greeks who had come for Passover asked Philip if they could meet Jesus and Jesus responded, “The time has come for me to be glorified. Like a grain of wheat, I must fall into the ground and die in order to produce a harvest of new life in the earth. Those who cling to life will lose it; those who give it up for my sake will gain eternal life, and anyone who wants to follow me must go where I go, and the Father will honour them.” Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify your name,” and a voice from heaven replied, “I have, and I will again.” Some thought it was thunder; others said an angel spoke. But Jesus told them, “The voice was for your sake, and now is the time for a time of crisis that will test and assess the world. When I’m lifted up, I’ll draw everyone to me,” referring to his death.
The crowd was confused. “Isn’t the Messiah supposed to live forever?” Jesus answered, “Walk in the light while you have it. Then you will become children of light.” After saying this, he left and stayed out of sight for a short time, and despite all his miracles, many still didn’t believe. But Isaiah had prophesied this, saying their eyes and hearts would be hardened so they wouldn’t turn and be healed. Yet some leaders did believe, but kept silent, fearing the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue because they valued human praise more than` God’s. Then Jesus came back to speak once again to the crowd and cried out, “If you trust me, you’re trusting God who sent me. I’ve come as light into the darkness. I didn’t come to judge the world but to save it. But those who reject me and my words will be judged by the truth I’ve spoken. These are not my own words—they’re from the Father, who gives eternal life. And I say exactly what he tells me to say.” Reading on into the next chapter of John – Chapter 13:1
On the evening of the Passover supper, Jesus knew his time on earth was ending and he would soon return to the Father, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot to betray him during the supper. Jesus, fully aware of his own divine origin and destiny, showed his deep love for his disciples by getting up from the table, removing his robe, wrapping a towel around himself, and beginning to wash their feet. When he reached Peter, Peter protested, “Lord, you shouldn’t be washing my feet! Jesus said, “You don’t understand now, but you will later.”
Peter insisted, “Never! “Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t share life with me.” Then wash my hands and head too!” Peter said. Jesus told him, “A person who has bathed only needs their feet washed to be fully clean. And you are clean—though not all of you,” referring to Judas who would betray him. After washing their feet, Jesus put on his robe and asked, “Do you understand what I’ve done? You call me ‘Lord’ and ‘Teacher’—and rightly so. And if I, your Lord, have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s. I’ve just given you an example of what serving means —you know that I have served you so serve one another, and you’ll be blessed. “I’m not speaking to all of you; I know whom I’ve chosen. But the Scripture must be fulfilled: ‘The one who shares my bread will betray me.’ I’m telling you now so when it happens, you’ll believe. Anyone who welcomes my messenger welcomes me—and the One who sent me.” Deeply troubled, Jesus said, “One of you will betray me.” The disciples were all stunned, and each one said to him ‘Is it I Lord, except for John who leaned in and asked, “Lord, who is it? ” Jesus answered, “It’s the one I give this piece of bread to.” Then he dipped it and gave it to Judas Iscariot. As soon as Judas ate it, Satan entered him. Jesus said to Judas, “Hurry—go and do what you must do.”
The others didn’t understand—some thought Jesus was sending Judas out to buy food or give money to the poor. Judas left quickly, stepping into the night. Once he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and God will be glorified in him. Dear children, I’ll be with you only a little longer. You’ll look for me, but you can’t come where I’m going. “So I give you a new command: love one another as I have loved you. Your love for each other will show the world that you are my disciples.” Peter asked, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “You can’t follow me now—but you will later. “But why not now?” Peter asked. “I’m ready to die for you!” Jesus answered, “Die for me? Before the rooster crows tomorrow, you’ll deny three times that you even know me.”
The Last Supper was the last time Jesus would gather with all of his disciples in one place and teach them and model to them the way of serving and loving one another. When he broke the bread and drank the cup with him he said ‘do this in remembrance of me’. He was telling them of his expectation of how they would live for him with loyalty and unity and sacrificial love for one another and for the world. But he also told them the reality that in the hours to come one of them would betray him and one of them would deny him and that all of them would scatter and desert him when he surrendered himself to those who would take him and kill him.

The disciples were incredulous to all of this, still not understanding the meaning of the things Jesus did and said, and this was what Jesus had expected. But the actions and words he expressed that night were immortalised, and would be lived out, serving as a remembrance for his disciples and for all of humanity who would believe. Heaven would soon bestow faith and the grace upon the earth through the Holy Spirit, and the events of that evening would encourage and inspire and challenge every soul that hears this story.

The man Judas allowed darkness to take over his being because of his wilful anger and resentment because of his lost hopes to bring about his idea of justice. He regretted what he did immediately after his treachery. Judas was unable to surrender the demand of his self-centred justice that drove his life. Instead of letting Jesus die for him and give him a new life he took his own life in his despair. Nevertheless, Jesus still died for him and said to his Father on the cross ‘forgive them Father they know not what they do.’ Not one of them knew what they were doing. Perhaps Mary his mother understood because it was the sword that continually pierced her heart, which was prophesied to her by Simeon when Jesus was dedicated as a baby.

The man Peter denied him just as Jesus predicted but his sin was not angry or resentful but a fear of being associated with the shame of what he saw as the failure of Jesus’ mission. He lived to receive the forgiveness and repentance and faith in the totally committed love of Jesus for him. He received the commission to live in partnership with Jesus as a witness of his resurrection.
When we can believe in the totally committed love of Jesus for us and we can accept our imperfect selves as being loved with so much compassion, we can then allow that love and compassion to flow out from us into the imperfect lives of the people in our personal world. We, like Peter receive that commission to be in partnership with Jesus in reconciling people to God for forgiveness and receiving the faith and the grace to be transformed into his likeness as a New Creation. Amen

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NOT UNTO DEATH
Jesus and his disciples had fled Judea where the Jewish leaders had tried to stone him and had gone out to the rugged mountainous area far from Judea. It was only a few weeks till Passover and Jesus had set his course to be in Jerusalem for the Passover feast - where he would become the Lamb slain for all Mankind from before the foundation of the world. He had been doing many signs and wonders and crowds were following him everywhere and the Jewish leaders were becoming more and more agitated and threatened by his fame and popularity. While they were out there a messenger came to Jesus that his good friend Lazarus was sick and in need of help. The message was sent by the two sisters of his friend Lazarus in Bethany, which was close to Jerusalem in Judea.
We read the account of this in John’s Gospel.
John 11:1 Lazarus, who lived in Bethany with Mary and her sister Martha, was sick. So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, “Sir, your good friend is very, very sick.”
But when Jesus heard about it he said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Although Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days and made no move to go to them. Finally, after the two days, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go to Judea.” But his disciples objected. “Master,” they said, “only a few days ago the Jewish leaders in Judea were trying to kill you. Are you going there again?”

But that did not deter Jesus, and he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has gone to sleep, but now I will go and awaken him!” The disciples, thought Jesus meant Lazarus was having a good night’s rest and said, “That means he is getting better!” But Jesus meant that Lazarus had died. Then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I am glad I wasn’t there, for this will give you another opportunity to believe in me. Come, let’s go to him.

It seems that Jesus had to remind himself that what he often said was not understood or even heard by those who heard it. And two days later when Jesus knew the time was right, he took his disciples to the place where Lazarus had been buried.
When they arrived at Bethany, they were told that Lazarus had already been in his tomb for four days. Bethany was only a couple of miles down the road from Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish leaders had come to pay their respects and to console Martha and Mary on their loss. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed at home.
Martha said to Jesus, “Sir, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. And even now it’s not too late, for I know that God will bring my brother back to life again, if you will only ask him to.” Jesus told her, “Your brother will come back to life again.” “Yes,” Martha said, “when everyone else does, on Resurrection Day.”
Jesus said, “I am the one who raises the dead and gives them life again. Anyone who believes in me, even though he dies like anyone else, shall live again. He is given eternal life for believing in me and shall never perish. Do you believe this, Martha?”
“Yes, Master,” she told him. “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one we have so long awaited.” Then she left him and returned to Mary and called her aside from the mourners and told her, “He is here and wants to see you.” So Mary went to him at once. Jesus had stayed outside the village at the place where Martha met him and when the Jewish leaders who were at the house trying to console Mary saw her leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus’ tomb to weep; so they followed her.
When Mary arrived at where Jesus was, she fell down at his feet, saying, “Sir, if you had been here, my brother would still be alive.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jewish leaders wailing with her, he was moved with exasperation and deeply troubled. “Where is he buried?” he asked them. They told him, “Come and see.” Jesus wept. And some of the Jewish leaders saw that as a sign of how much Jesus loved Lazarus
But some said, “This fellow healed a blind man—why couldn’t he keep Lazarus from dying?” And that caused Jesus to feel deeply troubled and he groaned inwardly at their unbelief in him.

Jesus indeed wept. This was a moment of deep and mixed human emotion for Jesus, not just for the grief that his beloved friends were suffering but also because he had agonised deeply within his spirit many times because of how little his disciples and other followers and critics understood what he said and did in bringing a new Kingdom Age to the earth. And not least he was confronting the reality of his own imminent torturous death and resurrection. He was creating a new spiritual age of faith and love and divine power, not one of human ability and materialism and political power. Noone realized that Jesus did not make up his own mind about when Heaven’s power would touch the earth, and whether someone would or should be healed. It was not done by his own reckoning. He had told his disciples on more than one occasion that he could do nothing until he heard his Father tell him to do it, but people interpreted his supernatural acts as being for people who in their opinion deserved them or were worthy of them.

Then they came to the tomb. It was a cave with a heavy stone rolled across its door.
“Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. But Martha said, “By now the smell will be terrible, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said, “But didn’t I tell you that you will see a wonderful miracle from God if you believe?”
So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me – I know You always hear me, but I said it because of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me”. Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus came out, bound up in grave cloths and his face muffled in a head swath. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go!” And so at last many of the Jewish leaders who were with Mary and saw it happen, finally believed on him. But some went away to the Pharisees and reported it to them.
Then the chief priests and Pharisees convened a council to discuss the situation.
“What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “For this man certainly does miracles. If we let him alone the whole nation will follow him—and then the Roman army will come and kill us and take over the Jewish government.”
And one of them, Caiaphas, who was High Priest that year, said, “You just don’t understand - let this one man die for the people—why should the whole nation perish?”
This prophecy that Jesus should die for the entire nation came from Caiaphas in his position as High Priest—he didn’t think of it by himself but was inspired to say it. It was a prediction that Jesus’ death would not be for Israel only, but for all the children of God scattered around the world. Then the Jewish leaders began plotting Jesus’ death.
The death of this man Jesus would bring divine life into the world.
The Bible says Through the disobedience of one man, Adam, death came to all men, but through the obedience of one man Jesus life has come to all mankind. (Romans 5:18)
People had a wrong perception of what true faith was, and this constantly troubled Jesus - the Bible says ‘consider Him who endured such contradiction from sinful flesh against Himself, (Hebrews 12:3). Their thoughts were not God’s thoughts nor their ways God’s ways. People followed him out into the fields to hear this greatest teacher and prophet of their time. Many said that he was The Messiah and that he would set up the kingdom of God on the earth. But to the materially and politically minded Jews this meant an army with a leader sent from heaven that would overthrow the Roman Empire and free them from its oppression over them
Jesus knew something about the resurrection of Lazarus that nobody else knew because his Father had revealed it to him by the Spirit. The consequence of the illness was death. But the purpose of the illness was not death, but glory to God – God on display for all to see - Resurrection. Jesus had spoken the words of life into the spirit of Lazarus and his spirit heard the voice of his friend Jesus saying to him ‘Lazarus come out ‘and his body received that lifegiving word and he came back to life. And something came to life in the spirit of all who believed in Jesus at that moment. The offence of Adam resulted in a mindset of separation from God for all of mankind and that is the pain that every human soul suffers throughout life. Spiritual death is the inner suffering of feeling separated from God. Jesus came to banish the curse of the separation mindset and he bring us into oneness with his life, resurrection life – the joy of the presence of God with us.

Jesus banishes all sense of separation between us and himself in our minds and hearts. There is no more spiritual death and no need to feel separated from the powerful resurrected life of Jesus within us. Jesus waited for his Father to speak from Heaven to call forth human life from Lazarus, and we listen for Jesus to speak from Heaven to call forth his spiritual life from within us. The Holy Spirit helps us pray our heartfelt prayer and Jesus intercedes from his heart and the Father brings about his good and perfect will. No prayer is wasted or discarded. From such a humble and heartfelt prayer healing and salvation for spirit, soul and body flow to us - and through us for others - and nothing is impossible with God.
So bless you all and I just want to pray now that as you go through this week when you feel that inner conflict, that is simply a little signal saying I'd like you closer to me. It's God allowing that to happen because we can't live with an inner peace if we're separated from the source of peace and love. He welcomes us home and it doesn't matter who we are - we say I'd like to be there, and he starts showing you that he is there - it's a miraculous thing. You just know all of a sudden that things change and you say to yourself, that couldn't have been a coincidence – but you think it must have been coincidence, and it happens again and God says that was a God incidence - keep asking and you will receive keep seeking and you will find. We're living in days when God is drawing us closer and closer from his big yes to our yes - as little as it might seem, our little yes, and that just needs to be a ‘thank you Lord for being there’. So thank you Lord for being with us this morning and drawing us closer to you. You are the resurrection and the life, and you live within us. Amen

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THE PHARISEE AND THE TAX COLLECTOR

This parable compares the prayer of a proud Pharisee with the prayer of a humble tax collector, and the parable highlights the fascinating mix of power and social status between the different groups that Jesus moved amongst on his journey into Jerusalem. The Roman governors and soldiers held the ultimate and most enforceable power base and made their powerful presence felt by everybody with their unforms and swords and spears. Next on the list were the Pharisees and Sadducees and other Jewish religious leaders who had a religious tribal power base, and they made their power status felt by their robes and rituals and blatant virtue signalling of their righteous adherence to the ordinances and commandments of the Jewish Law.

Then there were Jewish landowners and traders and slave owners whose money gave them a self-satisfied sphere of influence. Then there were the general labourers and slaves in the community who went about their business of making ends meet. Then there were the poor and needy and lame and blind who were powerless and lived just to survive. Another group that was strangely alien to everyone were the tax collectors. They were Jewish men who acted as the puppets of the Roman officials under strict orders to glean as much revenue as they could and they were disliked and unpopular with the entire Jewish community – their only power base was intimidation. A unique group that had a peesence within the community were the disciples and followers of Jesus, which included his mother and other women who provided support and provision for Jesus and the twelve.

Jesus had a particular relationship and influence with each of these groups. His relationship with the Romans was a little awkward and indifferent on their part but they sensed his inner power and authority and he had gained their respect because of his character and integrity, that brough supernatural healing and comfort to many people, even amongst their own, including a centurion whose son he had saved from dying. But in the end, it was a Roman governor that admired the stature and goodness of Jesus who came under pressure from the Jewish leaders and reluctantly ordered him to be crucified on a cross at Calvary.
To the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders Jesus was not just a rival but an enemy and a threat. They too saw his upright character and integrity, and they too sensed his inner power and authority that brough supernatural healing and comfort to many people, but this only made them feel more threatened and they were out to get him, to disempower him one way or another. And this was especially so because of the admiration and awe of the general Jewish community towards Jesus whom many believed was the Messiah they had been waiting for. The Pharisees were out to trap him at every turn and to prove themselves more righteous and knowledgeable of the Law and more approved of by God than Jesus was.

And Jesus had a strange but telling relationship with tax collectors. They were in a bind, caught in the middle of having to serve the military might of Rome and trying to hold their heads up in front of their fellow Jews who resented them as traitors or turncoats. But someone had to do the job, and Rome had all the say. Jesus saw into the hearts of some of these men and knew their shame and guilt and confusion and saw miraculous transformation in the hearts of three of them. Jesus called Matthew the tax collector to become one of his twelve disciples who loyally recorded the living words of Jesus for the whole world to read. Jesus touched the troubled heart of Zacchaeus the tax collector who climbed up a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by. Jesus told him to come down from his tree and said he wanted to come into is home and called him a son of Abraham, which offended the crowd. But Zacchaeus then repented of any cheating and intimidation of any people in the crow and personally repaid them four times as much as they had paid in their taxes. The next tax collector that Jesus honours is the one who humbly prays his prayer to God in the temple – in this parable in Luke Ch 18.

Luke 18:9-15 He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed this about himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you that this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

This very straightforward parable speaks of how God despises pride and honours humility, and the power conscious Pharisees to whom it was directed would have felt resentful that Jesus was not honouring their religious virtue signalling. The things that they performed in accordance with the Law were in order, as was their criticism of the sinful acts of extortion and adultery and injustice. But after they heard this parable, they hardened their hearts and doubled down on finding a way to do away with Jesus as we see written in the following chapters of Luke.

Jesus is teaching us here that the greatest sin was their pride that compared themselves with others that they esteemed as less spiritual or honourable than themselves. The Pharisees who heard the parable not only despised the tax collector as being less spiritual than themselves, but they judged him as despised in the eyes of God as well.
And Jesus knew they even judged himself in the same way. Pride can end up judging God as well as other people, just as the pride of Lucifer judged God and then caused Adam and Eve to judge God, telling them that God had deceived them and deprived them by withholding the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from them.

The humble tax collector in the temple was honest about what he had done and judged himself and not God. He took responsibility and asked God for mercy, humbly trusting God’s goodness and loving mercy and giving God the right place in his life. He got his relationship with himself and with God aligned with truth and with reality – totally unlike the Pharisee. That is why Jesus said that that man went home justified – true to himself and true to God.

The proud person lives in deception and the humble person lives in enlightenment.
When a humble person takes a lowest place God raises them into just the right place for their life. They come into alignment with God and are more likely to hear his truth and to understand it and to do it. They don’t have to compare themselves with others or judge them because they can leave that with God – that is having faith in a just God, and that is living a contented life.
In the Old Testament God calls himself the High and Lofty One. He is not being proud in saying this but simply stating the relationship between Almighty God and humanity. He says in Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Jesus is the prime example. The Bible says he made himself of no reputation. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death…Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name. (Philippians 2:5)

The apostle Peter says to us Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, 7casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. (1Peter 5:6-7)

That does not only mean he cares for you but that he is doing the caring so that you don't have to become full of care - not careless but carefree. And now bring all these things to God knowing that you're in alignment with him and see yourself as he sees you. That's not being proud, that's being grateful. He came down to hit that horizontal line and he says just go there - don't try and get up higher yourself and don't put yourself down so low that you feel too unworthy to connect with me. Get horizontal and be a human being as my son was and I'll meet you right at the middle and I'll align you with me vertically and everything around you on that plane in which you live will start working out for the things that I want for you. I have the final say and I bring all things together for good to you and you'll hear the truth and you'll know that you’re loved and you'll get understanding. And you’ll receive the healing that you need in spirit soul and body amen.
How ignorant and unaware were those who put Jesus on a cross as the most shameful dishonourable death there was - that they were actually making an illustration of God as the vertical and the horizontal for all life - a place where God’s will cuts across the will of man, and there is a place in the centre of that cross where God meets us. When Jesus was on the cross the place where the vertical met the horizontal was right at his heart and that is his heart for us. He says all I desire is your heart for me at that spot and I'll get you there. Ask him to take you to that place and he will – Amen.

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ENTITLED LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD

We are looking at the parable of the labourers in the vineyard who all get a full day’s wages whether or not they worked a full day or just a part of the day. This caused some workers to get offended because they felt entitled to receive more than they were given.
We will study this parable of Jesus in a moment in Matthew Ch.20 that shines a light on today’s culture of entitlement.

We live in a world where many suffer at the hands of selfish and entitled power brokers. Disillusionment runs deep as political and corporate leaders make promises then fail to deliver. And while some leaders genuinely seek solutions, the complexity of societal issues and political manoeuvring leaves people uncertain about who they can trust.
Take Argentina as a present-day example. Years of soaring inflation (up to 100%) and massive government spending on healthcare, education, energy, and food led to a bankrupt nation with 40% poverty and unemployment. The new government responded with austerity—cutting subsidies and cash payouts—but now police are cracking down on raging riots as properties get burned and destroyed. Once entitlements are given, they are difficult to revoke.

Entitlement funding is not right or wrong – it’s a matter of how appropriate and how wisely they are applied. In many Western democracies also, governments pour billions of public dollars into entitlement programs, often seen as tools to secure votes yet these expenditures are unsustainable. Too many power-hungry factions and empty promises can end up causing cycles of corruption and overcorrection. And when drastic corrections are made, they trigger chaos, and amid the turmoil, loud voices clash, but real dialogue is rare, and solutions seem elusive.

To break this spiral, we need honesty, transparency, sound policies, and competent leadership—especially at local levels—to restore order and trust. The politics of the world respond to power - not logic, so follow the logic. If logic is being applied things will work wisely and problems will get solved and there will not be the waste of billions of dollars of public money. Power not only corrupts, it also creates confusion.
In the Bible Jesus is called the logos - the logic - and when he is given the rule in our personal lives, things can get done wisely and caringly and effectively.

And therefore people who know their God can pray for the power of the Kingdom of God to be seen in the earth to reorder the chaos of a self-serving global culture. The Bible says Pray for one another and for rulers and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quiet, spending our time in godly living and dignity (semnot??s) (2 Timothy 1:7).
Our faith in this prayer can bring God’s grace into action for us and allows God to reorder our lives personally. Everything starts with us and God’s grace.

So let us read the parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew Ch.20.
Matthew 20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them one denarius a day and sent them out to work. A couple of hours later he was passing a hiring hall and saw some men standing around waiting for work, so he sent them also into his fields, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. At noon and again around three o’clock in the afternoon he did the same thing.
At five o’clock that evening he was in town again and saw some more men standing around and asked them, ‘Why haven’t you been working today?’ Because no one hired us,’ they replied. ‘Then go on out and join the others in my fields,’ he told them.
That evening he told the paymaster to call the men in and pay them, beginning with the last men first. When the men hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a denarius. So when the men hired earlier came to get theirs, they assumed they would receive much more. But they, too, were paid a denarius also.
“They protested, ‘Those fellows worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as those of us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’
‘Friend,’ he answered one of them, ‘I did you no wrong! Didn’t you agree to work all day for a denarius? Take it and go. It is my desire to pay all the same; is it against the law to give away my money if I want to? Is your heart evil because I am good?’ That is why those who put themselves last end up being first and those who put themselves first end up being last. I desire to include everybody, but not everybody desires to be included.
What he is saying here that he wants to give his goodness and grace to everybody but not everybody wants to receive it.
His response to the complaints of the early workers in the parable is to address their sense of injustice and entitlement. This parable of Jesus also speaks into the kind of self-serving confusion we see all around us today. His answer reveals the simple but deep eternal truths about God’s grace, and sovereignty, and the nature of his Kingdom.

Jesus forgave sinners and healed the sick and fed the poor in the name of his generous and sovereign Father. The leaders of Israel were resentful of this and felt entitled as having special claim on God and his kingdom because they had been performing and outperforming one another in the outward works of the Law for centuries. Who was this Jesus person to be so gracious to non-performers or even outsiders?
Jesus was preparing Israel and the world to receive the magnificent sovereign grace of God and become partners with him in his vineyard. And his word and his kingdom were about to come to everyone as a free gift. In Jesus, all has been accomplished, and we can confidently expect all good things from him.

This parable teaches us that God speaks to us and makes faith and grace available as his gift, but it is our task to listen, and the word heard becomes the word received and then faith allows that word to be lived through us by God’s enabling grace. Grace is the power of God at work in our partnership with him, where God works far more powerfully and competently and productively within us than we could ever do on our own and we are entitled to receive his grace - Come confidently to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need Hebrews 4.16. We are actually the entitled labourers in the vineyard – what a twist that is – it is God’s Divine logic!

Jesus said to the complainers Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you.” The early workers were not upset because they were treated unfairly, but because others received generosity that they didn’t think was deserved, and this exposes a deeper issue - resentment towards God for extending his grace to others.
Jesus said Is your eye (heart) evil because I am good?’. H is saying here ‘is your eye - your view or perspective of God - hateful because God is good and generous to everybody whether they deserve it or not. We can all tend to limit God’s goodness and grace.

Whoever receives the gift of grace spends time working together with a loving Jesus and not making comparisons or complaining about it. When we know that this grace is on offer from God through Jesus for everyone then we begin to rejoice and pray for it to abound everywhere. Where grace abounds in people there is more wisdom in the way they work and more agreement about how they work together. In the parable the workers received exactly what they were promised and so do we. God is fair and just, and his grace overcomes our human tendency to compare ourselves with others and makes us grateful to be working together with him. Our greatest reward comes from trusting in the goodness of what we have received and from trusting in the one who gives it to us. Be courageous and bold - we have an entitlement because we come under the title of our Lords name. We are entitled to work together with him. People might ask ‘what's your privilege in life? Our privilege is to work through the strength of Jesus. That may not sound logical to many people, but I don't believe that deserving it makes any difference to God. It is about believing it and asking. It is confidently saying Lord I need to know your mercy because I know I'm not I'm not there yet but your mercy is covering my insufficiency - but one thing I know that I can have from a heart that is as true as it can be to you Lord is your enabling power within - your life to do a thing that only you can do through me that I can enjoy doing. And not comparing - even compared to my own aspirations. We have a great and loving God, so never never limit that entitlement to his grace. Amen

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GODS CHOSEN PEOPLE

This parable sits between the parable of the cursed fig tree and the parable of the King who brought people in from the highways and byways to his son’s wedding - when the privileged guests rejected his invitation.
Today’s parable tells the clear story of how Israel ceases to be the expression of the Kingdom of God on the earth as a holy nation that was chosen and called to be a light to all the nations of the earth. They were to be the reflection of God’s love and goodness and salvation to the Gentiles. The parable show us how the New Testament Church was to become the holy nation chosen to express the Kingdom of God in the earth and to invite the rest of humanity to enter in. Holy means consecrated to God and set apart to reflect his love and goodness and uprightness in the earth.

Matthew 21”33 “Jesus spoke another parable: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit. And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. He then sent another larger group of servants, and they treated them the same way. Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Jesus then asked the chief priests and Pharisees “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?” They said to Him, “He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
It was God who brought all this about, and it is a wonder in our eyes’
I’m saying to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of the kingdom. And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” Now when the chief priests and Pharisees heard this parable, they realised that He was speaking about them. But when they sought to lay hands on Him, they feared the multitudes, because they took Him for a prophet.

That verse says that the stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone upon which a holy and heavenly life on earth can be built. That is reflected in many places in the Bible, in Psalms, in the Gospels and in Acts, and in Isaiah and in Ezekiel. God’s desire was for people in the earth to bear the fruits of his Kingdom and to partake of his Divine nature and to have Jesus on display in their lives. This was available to happen through Israel and even to Israel, but they rejected Jesus as the cornerstone.
God first spoke this plan to Abraham when he chose Israel to be a light to the nations, a people set apart to reflect his Divine nature and guide the world toward him. He also confirmed this through Moses, telling them “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession… you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”(Exodus 19). But he made it clear that this calling was never just for Israel’s sake - “It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name… Then the nations will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 36:22-23). Yet Israel made it all about their name and not God’s name, and history shows that Israel struggled to fulfill this mission. Instead of looking outward, they mostly turned inward, focusing on their national identity rather than their divine purpose. They fell into idolatry and disobedience and ended up in exile and suffered under the tyranny of Assyria, and later Babylon, both of whom God used in judgement upon them (2 Kings 17:7-23).
But God was merciful, and he continually reaffirmed this calling through the prophets, because Israel was meant to serve as a spiritual bridge between God and the world as a priestly nation. A priest mediates between God and people, and Israel’s role was to bring His truth and his justice and his presence to all nations. “I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles. to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from prison those who sit in darkness.” (Isaiah 46).
So God’s plan to bless the nations through Israel would still come to pass, despite their failure in that mission because God’s eternal master plan was for Jesus as a Jew to be the true light to the world. “The people living in darkness saw a great light.” (Matthew 4). Jesus embodied everything Israel was meant to be as the Light of the world (John 8), revealing God’s kingdom not only to the Jews but to all people, and before he ascended to heaven, he gave this commission to his disciples – not just to speak the Gospel but to Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28).
The Church, made up of all who follow Jesus now carries Israel’s original calling—to bring the awesome light of God’s kingdom to the world. The Church is the new priestly nation as the apostle Peter writes in1Peter 2:9 – They are the new vinedressers in the parable of the vineyard and the mission has passed from Israel to the Church. But although the Church is now the messenger of the Gospel, Israel still remains significant in God’s prophetic plan, which speaks of a time when Israel would once again be at the heart of global events – and the Bible says that that all Israel will finally know their Saviour (Romans11). God’s promise to use Israel as a light to the nations was never abandoned—it was fulfilled in Jesus and expanded through the Church and today both Israel and the global body of believers have a crucial role in preparing the world for what is to come. Israel’s very existence today remains a testimony to God’s faithfulness, and despite intense opposition, they endure as a nation and the world’s attention is fixed on Jerusalem as they continue to fulfill prophecy. Zechariah prophesied concerning Israel that in the last days all the nations of the earth will gather against it (Zecharia 12)– as the Gospel continues to spread across the earth through the Church.
In this time of global upheaval, of wars, moral confusion, and a deepening divide between truth and deception God’s plan is still unfolding, and the Church is called to shine brighter than ever, bringing the message of Jesus to a world in desperate need of hope. As darkness increases, so must the light of God’s people. His kingdom will become more fully established and history will unfold and move toward the return of Christ in God’s good time. Until then, both Israel and the Church are called to be a testimony of God’s faithfulness in a broken world.
There was one thing Jesus said in the parable that held both warning and great promise both to Israel and the Church – ‘It is not for your sakes, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name… Then the nations will know that I am the Lord.’ (Ezekiel 36). Israel made it all about their name and not God’s name, and history shows that Israel always struggled to fulfill their mission. Instead of looking outward, they mostly turned inward, focusing on their national and religious identity and privilege and entitlement, rather than on their divine purpose. The same thing serves as a warning for the Church
The Church has been invited to live in the name of Jesus and that means more than adding his name to the end of our prayers – it means reflecting his life within us. Our name is in his name because our identity is hidden with Christ in God. We don’t do things in the name of our personal spiritual identity, or religious affiliation or reputation, or fame and success or in the name of the Church. We do things in the name of Jesus. God’s name portrays his nature and goodness and power to bless all those we know in our world. If we truly bear his name, we are empowered by his grace to reflect his nature, and when we do, he assures us that we will live the most fulfilled and meaningful life that can be lived – an abundant life. Amen

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A FIGTREE LIVES AGAIN God’s people Israel are mentioned many times in the Old and new Testament as his fig tree, and it reflects the spiritual and physical health of Israel, and we read in John Ch 1 where Jesus says to Nathanael, a young man who was sitting under a Figtree you are an Israelite indeed, without guile. And today’s parable is of Jesus cursing a fig tree because there was no fruit on it, only leaves, and this made a distinct impression on his disciples. We read the first part of this story in Matthew Ch 21 Matthew 21:18 Now in the morning, as Jesus returned to the city, He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away. and then the story is followed up the next morning as we see in Matthew Ch 22. Matthew 22:20-22 Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.” When Jesus said Let no fruit grow on you ever again’ Jesus was prophesying here that in that age in which they were living the time was soon coming for the nation of Israel to cease to exist and to be scattered, and to exist only as communities and Orthodox religious Jews among the nations of the world. The prophesy of Jesus about the fig tree withering did happen in that age, and Israel were scattered and remained scattered and persecuted through the age that followed. But in 1948 after the most desolate of tribulations that came upon the Jewish people in World War 2 when Israel was able miraculously to return to their land. The nation of Israel was reborn and remains to this day against all odds. That fig tree miraculously began to live again. That miraculous coming back to life for the nation of Israel was also prophesied by Jesus in the same gospel of Matthew in Ch 24 where Jesus links the time of that fig tree living again to the to the signs of his coming at the end of the age. Matthew 24:3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you (he is speaking to Israel here), and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake (happening now). And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another (happening now). Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many (happening now). And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold (happening now). But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations (happening now), and then the end will come. He was speaking to the nation of Israel then, but these apocalyptic events would come upon all nations. Jesus then says in verse 22 Matthew 24:22 Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things (all of those global trials and events happening now), know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place Today Israel lives again as a nation, but there is another extraordinary facet to this prophesy. It states that there will be a generation alive in and after that time. If we take the year 1948 to be the time of Israel being re-established as a nation it leaves open the possibilities of those things happening in these days. Many people have lived and died since 1948 and there will be many more that are yet to live and die before those major significant global events are over. The time frame of the finality of these things is left wide open because the final phrase that Jesus says is ‘and then will the end come’ the words ‘and then’ mean ‘and after that’ and nobody know how long ‘after that’ means. So I can only speculate on that aspect. All I can see is that our current global apocalyptic ‘now and not yet’ events are unprecedented. The only perspective I can take about living a here and now life in these days is to be living a prepared and ready life for God in Christ, through the truth and power of his Holy Spirit. Our times are in his hands, and we are in the protective care of his loving embrace. I sent out over 120 scriptures of the goodness of God recently and here are three of them – The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.” Nahum 1:7 How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in You.” (Psalm 31:19). He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings, you will find refuge. (Psalm 91:4) And there are many, many more. If God has allowed difficult things to happen in your life it is so you can show the people in your world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard. It is also tempting to become disillusioned with the circumstances of our lives compared to others but in the presence of God, he gives us a deeper peace and joy that transcends it all. If life was stable with no needs and problems, we would never need God’s help. But since it’s not, we can reach out for Him regularly and be thankful for the unknowns and that we don’t have control, because it makes us run to God. David said in the psalms, I saw the prosperity of the wicked.… Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure.… When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God” (Ps. 73) David went into the face-to-face personal presence of God and found refuge and strength. We can live in that place of refuge and strength, not only for ourselves but also to give comfort and hope to others in our world.
Paul O'Sullivan - pauloss@icloud.com

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PARABLES 17 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
Today I’m sharing the parable of the king who invites many privileged guests to his son’s wedding feast, but they are all too busy attend. This is one of many end times parables that Jesus taught, after finishing two years and some months ministry in Galilee and then heading towards Jerusalem to begin the second part of his ministry. In Jerusalem he would begin to teach about his death and resurrection and ascension into heaven and his return to earth in the last days.

This parable is prophetic of the wedding feast of Jesus and his bride the Church in the last days. It tells the story of a King who was arranging a wedding feast for his son and had invited certain privileged guests, and many of those guests did not honour the king with their acceptances but made excuses for why they could not come. Both Matthew (Ch.22) and Luke (Ch.14) tell the story and the stories each complement one another emphasising certain attitudes and values in one story, and not in the other, and giving detail in one story to supplement the other.
Matthew defines the man who was inviting the guests as a king, which makes the refusal to attend, a grave insult or rebuff. Luke makes the emphasis that the dinner tables were already set and just waiting to be occupied by the guests, which means that there was little or no notice for the guests to plan the event in their calendar, because the date of a wedding was never announced a long time beforehand as they are today. In those times the bridegroom would have to prepare a home for he and his bride to live in, and only then would he let people know when he was ready. And this all had to meet with the parents’ approval and when it was determined that the home was ready, the groom would gather his friends and go to retrieve his bride—often at night, with lamps and great celebration.
The bride and her companions had to be constantly prepared (as seen in the Parable of the Ten Virgins), and did not know the exact day or hour of his arrival. Once the groom arrived, the wedding celebration began and could last for seven days or more and unprepared, or unresponsive guests who were not ready for the announcement missed out on the feast.
When the king heard of the rebuffs to his invitation, he was furious, and he punished those privileged people firmly. Matthew writes. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways (Luke adds the byways – (or hedges), and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and byways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.
In the Gospel of Luke, the servants are to firstly go to the streets and lanes to the poor and disabled and the blind and the crippled. And when these had come in the servant said to the master that there was still lots of room left still n as room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. And those people came in, and they would have brought their friends with them. Compel may seem to be a forceful word, but the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 that the love of God ‘compelled’ him to reach out to bring others into the Kingdom of God.
God the Father wants a full house for the marriage feast of his Son Jesus to his Bride which is the Church, and this will occur at God’s appointed time, but if those in the Church are not prepared and ready, God will still get himself a full house. He will be sending the Holy Spirit (his servants in the parable) into the world to open peoples’ hearts to receive his invitation. There will be highways and byways people out there and streets and lanes people out there, that may be at different stages of spiritual growth or have some weird and wonderful ideas about God, but if they have hearts to know God they will be taught of the Lord and hear and receive the full message of Jesus, and their souls will be saved. And they will also bring their friends with them.
The following words about God that we are about to hear are from two people who in recent times have become listened to by millions of people around the world day after day, and they influence people in the political culture or the philosophical or even alternate cultures. They are sincerely grappling to understand the mystery of faith, and I believe God has given them a voice as a trumpet sound to awaken unbelieving hearts to the goodness of God. And these people already proclaim Jesus as God and as our resurrected Lord and Saviour.
These two people are Jordan Peterson and Russel Brand who preach Jesus, and the transforming work of God in their lives. You will hear these if you listen to the podcast and in the PDF file of the notes you can click on the links to the video clips that we saw in church.
Jordan Peterson – video clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PbKxMnoCao&list=PLKki_g3WkrNeYJr2mUzjFh4B1lOzRp8bH&index=1
Russel Brand – video clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQhznYoCeOc&list=PLKki_g3WkrNeYJr2mUzjFh4B1lOzRp8bH&index=2

God is speaking to us from Heaven in these days more than ever before in history. The Bible says in Acts Ch 2 that on the Day of Pentecost ‘Each one heard God speak in their own language’.
This is not merely a spoken national language or dialect but it is the uniquely personal way that God has created the individual human spirit of every person on the planet to hear the Holy Spirit speak to them in a deeply personal way, using all kinds of communicational frameworks. Many hear The Holy Spirit by reading in the Word of God, and some by hearing the heart of God through a song, whether spiritual or secular, and others see God in the awesomeness and beauty of his creation or even in a dream or a vision. For others it may be the prompting of God through a meaningful phrase that comes into our mind and that only we could personally interpret. When we have faith in the work of the Kingdom of God in Heaven, we begin to understand the spiritual reality that God’s will in Heaven is always waiting to happen on earth in our lives. That spiritual reality becomes our new reality for our hearts and minds – what we think and what we believe. And if we ask for the Holy Spirit to become active in our lives, we will be guided by the Holy Spirit to hear what God is saying to us though Jesus and see with eyes of faith what he showing us to do. We will pray prayers of surrender to receive God’s answers and get his results rather than our demands for our own wishes.
In the days of Jesus, a wedding was not planned with a calendar. And a wedding feast will be prepared for God’s people before Jesus returns, and we don’t have a calendar for that either, but the same principle applies about being prepared and ready for the anticipated event – Jesus said that only the Father knows the day and the hour. This parable emphasizes faithfulness, and the expectancy of the joy of final oneness together, making marriage a powerful metaphor for God’s covenant love. God is stirring this love response in peoples’ hearts through familiar and unfamiliar ways and voices in these days. The Holy Spirit can use all of us as doorkeepers that can open the doors of peoples’ hearts to hear the voice of Jesus personally and offer their lives to him as he has done for us. Be open to engaging with the highways and byways people in your world - so that you can help them understand the hope that lives in your life concerning the reality of Jesus.

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THE FACE OF GODS PRESENCE

When we look in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we see that the word ‘face’ also means ‘presence’, and the same word also means ‘person’, and that word in Greek is ‘prosopon’ – beholding the eyes or beholding the look or gaze. And we’ll start with the following scripture
2 Corinthians 4:6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face (prosopon – the presence and person) of Jesus Christ
Jesus said ‘When you have seen me you have seen the Father (John 14:9).
The word ‘prosopon’ in Scripture ties together physical reality (face), relational reality (presence), and personal nature (Identity). ‘Prosopon’s is God’s gift of connection between himself and us, and it is our gift of connection between another. When Jesus lived on earth, he was the prosopon of God, fully revealing God’s presence and personal nature. The Bible also says For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; (Colossians 2:9)

The Holy Spirit who is the ‘Third Person’ of the Godhead unveils for us the face and the presence and the personal nature of the Father and Jesus, as persons that we can come to know. That means that our lives can flow together with God’s, with an inner peace and expressing a Godly quality of life in our outward behaviour, as the Apostle Peter says ‘we become partakers of the Divine nature’ (2Peter 1:4).

THE FACE OF THE FATHER shining upon us means not just His presence but His nearness and favour and relational engagement. Numbers 6:22“The LORD bless you and keep you, The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you, The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. “‘
The Father’s face reveals him as a person of loving care and provision and protection as he brings all of our circumstances together in the right and perfect time for his good will to be of greatest blessing for our lives.
There was an occasion when Moses asked God for assurance that he would be with him when he took Israel into the promised Land. God said to him “My presence (paniym) will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Exodus 33:14) At this time also Moses asked God if he could see his glory – his ``face of radiant glory - and God told him that no one could see the face of God and live (Exodus 33:20) and he said to Moses ‘Here is a place by Me, stand on that rock, and, while My glory passes by I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.” Moses stood on the rock and then God hid him in the cleft of the rock and Moses was allowed to see his ‘back, which means he saw that God had been with him and was doing ongoing wonders in his life.
That was a prophetic picture of our lives in the New Testament where we stand on the Rock of Jesus and we are hidden in him as Moses was in the cleft of the Rock, and like Moses we also see his ‘back’ which means we also see that the Father has been with us doing ongoing wonders in our lives.
But in two places in the Bible it also oddly says that God spoke to Moses ‘face to face’ (Exodus 33, Numbers 12). What does this mean? Here God was saying that he spoke to him ‘person to person’ so that he could experience an intimate relationship of love and trust with him. An example of this is as person to person phone call but not a Facetime call.

The Face of the Father can also express his wrath. The word wrath here means intense indignation. It is the firm face of the Person of the Father that looks with just judgement and grief upon the damage that sin causes, bringing harm and destruction to his children. The wrath of God is expressed in both the Old and the New Testament. God’s wrath is a protective strong disciplinary action upon harmful evil doers on behalf of those who are harmed, so that wrath is an act of love – and it is ultimately redemptive for evil doers, which means that through that discipline they are made aware of their opportunity for repentance unto life and faith.
The Bible says that we who believe in the saving power of Jesus on the cross, will be saved from wrath through Jesus (Romans 5:9), We will be disciplined in a firm but loving way by our Father God while knowing his mercy upon us and his closeness to us through the times of trial as he reveals to us what needs to be transformed in our lives.

THE FACE OF JESUS is joyful and encouraging and compassionate, unveiling his dedication in sharing who he is with us as being human as well as divine. Jesus has experienced every trial and test of faith and every temptation of sin that we have, and he knows our human weakness and limitations. He stands by us and he walks with us and he speaks his Words of life to us in times of trial and testing and in times of guidance and blessing, to increase our faith and trust in him and in our loving Father. ‘He will save, he will rejoice over you with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over you with singing.’ (Zephaniah 3:17). The Bible says that Jesus is not only a brother to us but also a loving friend who enjoys our friendship.

THE FACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Holy Spirit’s love and goodness are seen throughout the Bible in His comforting presence, intercession, guidance, and empowerment. He is not just a force but a personal being who grieves, loves, prays, and works for our transformation.
He is the person who is in and through the Father and Jesus and he flows from them to us. The Holy Spirit is the person who unveils the face of Jesus and the Father to us and he brings us into person-to-person unity of the spirit and one accord with each other.
He also unveils our own face to ourselves as our true self that was created by God before the foundation of the world, as he transforms our nature into the likeness of Jesus.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The Apostle James said that if someone hears the life-giving Word but does not allow it to shape their life, they are like a person who glances into a mirror and catches a glimpse of their face — the face of the true self that God designed for them before they were even born. But if they get distracted by outward things they wiil forget who they really are. However, if they remain steadfast to the truth of the real self that they were shown, and live it out, they will experience blessing in all they do. (James 1:22)

The face or presence or person of the Holy Spirit is always unveiling God’s love, life, beauty, strength, and order and justice and mercy. But the Holy Spirit also unveils the disorder in the world and everything and everyone in it. He makes clear the difference between darkness and light and of falsehood and truth.
The Holy Spirit has been dividing light from darkness from the very beginning.
Genesis 1:2 … The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters (the dark disordered chaos). Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

The Holy Spirit is always inviting us to enter into the presence of God. That does not mean secluding ourselves in isolation like some other meditation practices, where people detach themselves from everything to find the mystery of who they are through nothing else but an exercise of their own imagination.
And with material things going on around us spiritual contemplation can seem for many people like holding their breath under water, but it is not hard at all if we know that we are coming person to person into God’s real presence. This becomes a simple practice of engaging with the real persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are totally focused on us at all times. It is not hard for them to enter into our presence because we are vitally important to them. We are who they live for and they invite us to do the same.

So what can we do? We can start by welcoming their real presence with us. The Bible says we enter into the presence (face and person) of God behind the veil of our own self-consciousness – our flesh (Hebrews 10:19-22) and we go into the place and space of God consciousness. The Holy Spirit weaves that gift of connection together for us by revealing the faces of Jesus and the Father, and then as we are touched by their presence and personal reality, he reveals to us our own unveiled face of thanksgiving to God. That becomes our true face. We share that face with the person (face) of the Holy Spirit. It is at that moment that our face and the face of the Holy Spirit become the same face.

A THREE MINUTE REFLECTION
Our lives can become fruitful in the transforming work of the Holy Spirit by starting with a simple three-minute reflection where we spend one minute contemplating the face or really, the person behind the face of the Father and then doing the same with Jesus and then with the Holy Spirit and we keep saying thank you till we mean it. If our life before God can be one big thank you, we will know that we are in the faith. Our thanks in all things is our repentance and our acceptance of his will. It is our hope for his mercy and grace and our faith and trust in his goodness.

I have included a selection of about 120 Scriptures that speak of the love and goodness of the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit - and they take up eight pages. Read them and choose ones that speak to you, some more than others at any particular time. The Holy Spirit will guide your choices, and you will come to know your God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Paul O’Sullivan – pauloss@icloud.com)

1. Father’s Love for Us
   • Exodus 34:6 – “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.”
   • Deuteronomy 7:9 – “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.”
   • Psalm 136:26 – “Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.”
   • Isaiah 54:10 – “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you.”
   • Jeremiah 31:3 – “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
   • John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
   • Romans 5:8 – “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
   • Romans 8:38-39 – “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
   • Ephesians 2:4-5 – “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
   • 1 John 3:1 – “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
   • 1 John 4:7-10 – “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.”
2. Father’s Goodness Toward His People
   • Psalm 23:6 – “Surely Your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
   • Psalm 27:13 – “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”
   • Psalm 31:19 – “How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in You.”
   • Psalm 34:8 – “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.”
   • Psalm 52:1 – “The goodness of God endures continually.”
   • Psalm 86:5 – “You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to You.”
   • Psalm 100:5 – “For the LORD is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”
   • Psalm 107:1 – “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever.”
   • Nahum 1:7 – “The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.”
   • Matthew 7:11 – “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”
   • Romans 2:4 – “Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”
   • James 1:17 – “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

3. Father’s Compassion and Faithfulness
   • Lamentations 3:22-23 – “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
   • Micah 7:18-19 – “Who is a God like You, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
   • Luke 6:35-36 – “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
   • Deuteronomy 33:27 – “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
   • Isaiah 41:10 – “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
   • Zephaniah 3:17 – “The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”
   • John 15:9 – “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.”
   • 1 Peter 5:7 – “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

4. The Love of Jesus
   • Matthew 9:36 – “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
   • Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
   • Matthew 14:14 – “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
   • Matthew 15:32 – “Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, ‘I have compassion for these people; they have already been with Me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.’”
   • Mark 10:21 – “Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ He said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.’”
   • Luke 19:10 – “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
   • John 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
   • John 10:11 – “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”
   • John 13:1 – “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”
   • John 15:9 – “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.”
   • John 15:13 – “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
   • Romans 8:35-39 – “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
   • Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
   • Ephesians 3:18-19 – “That you may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
   • Revelation 1:5 – “To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood.”

5. The Goodness of Jesus
   • Matthew 4:23 – “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
   • Matthew 12:15 – “Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. A large crowd followed Him, and He healed all who were ill.”
   • Matthew 19:14 – “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’”
   • Mark 1:41 – “Jesus was indignant. He reached out His hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ He said. ‘Be clean!’”
   • Mark 6:34 – “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So He began teaching them many things.”
   • Luke 4:18-19 – “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
   • Luke 22:32 – “But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”
   • Acts 10:38 – “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him.”
   • 2 Corinthians 8:9 – “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”
   • Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin.”
   • Isaiah 53:5 – “But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”
   • Mark 15:37-39 – “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed His last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how He died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’”
   • John 10:17-18 – “The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.”
   • Romans 5:6-8 – “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
   • Colossians 1:13-14 – “For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
   • Hebrews 12:2 – “For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The Holy Spirit, as the third person of the Trinity, is described in Scripture as loving, good, compassionate, and deeply involved in the lives of believers.

The Love of the Holy Spirit - The Holy Spirit’s love and goodness are seen throughout the Bible in His comforting presence, intercession, guidance, and empowerment. He is not just a force but a personal being who grieves, loves, prays, and works for our transformation. Below is a collection of passages that highlight His love, goodness, and personal attributes, including His ability to grieve and intercede for us.
• Romans 5:5 – “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
• Romans 15:30 – “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.”
• Galatians 5:22-23 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
• 2 Timothy 1:7 – “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline.”

The Holy Spirit actively expresses love—both through His work in our lives and by filling us with divine love.
2. The Goodness of the Holy Spirit
• Psalm 143:10 – “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; may Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
• Nehemiah 9:20 – “You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold Your manna from their mouths, and You gave them water for their thirst.”
• Acts 10:38 – “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him.”
• John 16:13 – “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come.”

The Holy Spirit’s goodness is evident in His guidance, instruction, and empowerment of believers.
3. The Holy Spirit as a Person Who Feels Emotion

The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force but a living divine person who experiences emotions such as grief, joy, and intercession.

The Holy Spirit Grieves
• Ephesians 4:30 – “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
• Isaiah 63:10 – “Yet they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy and He Himself fought against them.”

Just as a person can feel sorrow, the Holy Spirit grieves when believers sin, reject His guidance, or live in ways contrary to God’s will.

1. The Holy Spirit as the One Who Intercedes for Us
   • Romans 8:26-27 – “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
   • Zechariah 12:10 – “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a Spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on Me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”

These verses reveal that the Holy Spirit actively prays for us—even when we don’t have words—expressing our needs to God with deep, heartfelt groaning.

1. The Holy Spirit as Our Helper, Comforter, and Helper
   • John 14:16-17 – “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.”
   • John 14:26 – “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
   • John 15:26 – “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—He will testify about Me.”
   • John 16:7 – “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

The Holy Spirit is our personal Helper, Counselor, and Helper, always working on our behalf.

1. The Holy Spirit Gives Life and Power
   • Genesis 1:2 – “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
   • Job 33:4 – “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
   • Ezekiel 37:14 – “I will put My Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.”
   • Luke 4:18 – “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.”
   • Acts 1:8 – “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
   • 2 Corinthians 3:17 – “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
   • Galatians 5:25 – “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
   The Holy Spirit is the giver of life, power, and freedom, actively working in creation, salvation, and the daily walk of our lives as believers.

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THREE MOUNTAINS OF PROPHETIC PRESENCE

Psalm 125:2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, So the LORD surrounds His people
There were three mountains surrounding Jerusalem and they were Mt. Zion, Mt Gibeon and Mt. Moriah. Upon each of these mountains at one time or another there was either a tabernacle or a tent or a temple for priestly and congregational worship and sacrifice for Israel. Mount Moriah and Mt. Zion were so close as to blend into one mountain and Mt. Gibeon was about a one-hour walk to the west. We are going to look at when these places of worship existed on those mountains and how they got there, and today we will be focusing upon the tabernacle of David which was really a tent and not as structured as the tabernacle of Moses on Mt. Gibeon or the temple of Solomon on Mt. Moriah. The story of David’s tent (the tabernacle of David) has significant meaning for the Church today regarding the prophetic fulfillment of times of an abundance of the presence of God in and upon his people before the return of the Lord Jesus to the earth.

James quotes a prophecy in the book of Acts regarding the restoring of the presence and power of the Spirit that will come in the end days to God’s people.
Acts 3:20 … And he will send you times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord and send Jesus Christ back to you as appointed. For he must remain in heaven until the final restoration of all things spoken through the prophets…
These times of refreshing of the presence of the Lord are linked to the final ingathering of God’s people on the earth amongst all the nations and there is a special mention of the ‘Tabernacle of David’ that will be rebuilt at that time. Reading on in ch.15
Acts 15:16 In that time I will return, and I will rebuild the tabernacle of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it so that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the people who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.’

I mentioned the Tabernacle of Moses. God commanded Moses to build that in the wilderness – it was about the size of half a football field with an outer curtain fence and with an inner tent of two chambers called the Holy place and the Most Holy Place. Joshua ended up taking the Ark and the tabernacle across the Jordan River and set it up in Shiloh where years later a foolish incident occurred where Israel took the Ark from the Tabernacle Just before the rule of King Saul, thinking that would give them victory. The Ark was stolen by the Philistines who were judged by God for doing this by having boils and tumors break out on their skin, so the Philistines finally abandoned the Ark and sent it back to Israel where it sat disregarded for 20 years in a place called Keriath Jearim. The Tabernacle of Moses finally ended up on one of those mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Mt Gibeon, but without the Ark of the covenant.
David became king after Saul and early in his reign God put it in his heart to gather Israel together to bring back the stolen and then discarded Ark of the presence of God and he brought it back and set it inside a tent on Mt. Zion as the tabernacle of David, where it stayed for forty years as the place of worship and rejoicing. Meanwhile the Tabernacle of Moses on Mt Gibeon remained as a place of sacrifice for sin and priestly offerings but it never again housed the Ark of the presence of God.
Unlike the elaborate Tabernacle of Moses which had three compartments – the Outer Court, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place (where the Ark used to occupy).
David radically departed from tabernacle worship with its blood sacrifices for sin.
David's Tabernacle had only one compartment, the Most Holy Place - and there was no veil! Priests could offer sacrifices of praise and incense and attend to the showbread and the lighting of the candles but there were no blood sacrifices, and everyone could come freely to that tent to praise and worship the Lord – men, women, musicians and singers.
The ark of the presence of God was finally placed in Solomon’s Temple on Mt. Moriah by king Solomon after David had died. David had wanted to build a permanent glorious temple for the presence of God and God refused him and said that his son Solomon would build it. But David amassed materials, including stones, timber, and precious metals for its construction and also provided Solomon with the detailed plans and design for the Temple that God gave to him, and stones were being shaped in the nearby quarry.
So the preparations for the Temple overlapped with the ongoing praise and worship and close fellowship with the presence of God in David’s Tabernacle. When Solomon began building the Temple he attended the tabernacle of Moses over on Mt. Gibeon for sin offerings and feasts just as Israel had been doing for all those years but without any experience of the presence of God in the Ark. And when Solomon’s Temple was completed the Ark was moved from David’s Tabernacle into the Holy of Holies of the Temple with great rejoicing and celebration.

I believe that the prophecy that James quoted in Acts about the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David was referring to the days in which we now live as God’s people who have been made alive by the Spirit of the Lord, because God has put it into our hearts in these days as he did with David to seek after the presence of the Lord. And God has been releasing through the Holy Spirit in recent years the liberty and freedom of praise and worship that David saw in his Tent of God’s presence. In those times David wrote beautiful psalms and spiritual songs to the Lord which we still sing today.

And just as in the other tabernacle on Mt. Gibeon there were rituals and sacrifices but no Ark of the presence of God, this speaks of certain expressions of institutional Church (not all) or ideological religious activity that is not exercised to seek the life and liberty and truth of the Holy Spirit which burned in the early church and somehow fell away.

And at the same time as those two tabernacle expressions were being seen – Moses Tabernacle on Mt Gibeon and David’s Tabernacle on Mt Zion - we see that stones were being quarried nearby for Solomons Temple. We are those living stones experiencing in these days the chiseling of God’s transforming dealings upon our lives. We are living stones being shaped in such a way that we will fit together relationally and functionally as his spiritual Temple to contain and express the life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Solomons temple was the final dwelling place of God upon the earth and is symbolic of a Church that will be made ready for the return of Jesus. There is symbolism of the two numbers that are repeated in the dimensions of this Temple which are the number 10 and the number 120. The number 10 speaks of the finality of the work of trials and testings of faith upon our lives (The 10 trials of Deuteronomy 8, 10 days waiting Acts 2 etc) and the number 120 (end of all flesh Genesis 6 and Acts 2) speaks of the end of human effort and the release of grace in the expression of Jesus through our lives.
The Temple porch was 120 cubits high (2Chronicles 3) and was overlaid with gold, which speaks of the nature of God. There were 10 lampstands of gold instead of one in the tabernacle of Moses, and there were 10 tables of 12 loaves of showbread instead of one – that is 120 loaves of showbread speaking of the fulness of order and government (12) and communion and relational unity. This is the future promise of the expression of the final dwelling place of God’s people before he returns - relating in unity together in the earth - and we can look forward to the days when by the grace of God that gathering of God’s people all over the globe will emerge. Let God put it into your heart as he did with David to seek after the presence of the Lord and wait inh is presence and let him speak to you. One thing I give people assurance about is - God will answer that prayer. Amen

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DANIEL AND APOCALYPSE NOW AND NOT YET

The word apocalypse (Apocalypto or revelation) means ‘the unveiling of things that have been hidden or covered up’. God hides things from us until he is ready to reveal them to us, and people cover things up until God is ready to expose them. Both these meaning of apocalypse are occurring in our world at the moment - like never before. The idea of apocalypse occurs in two stages – first there is a gradual unveiling of many things being in the process of change at the same time without any clear indication of what they are going to change into – the winds of change – Now and not yet. The second and final change stage is a suddenness of something new happening that stops us in our tracks as the manifestation of a momentous change finally occurs. It was like that on the day of Pentecost. Jesus told 120 people to wait in an upper room for the ‘promise of the Father’ and they did. Jesus had told them that they would be ‘baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’. Jesus had been unveiling to them in his teachings the wonder of things to come but they did not fully understand what he meant. They knew something was going to happen but they did not know when, or what it was going to look like. Then the day of Pentecost arrived And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:2). The entire world was changed that day and the rest is history.

I believe that we are currently living in the apocalyptic days where there are signs of great change occurring in all nations of the earth, but we do not know how many years it will be before God accomplishes his final purposes for the world and his Church and for each individual soul, and we don’t know what it will look like. But Daniel prophesied that there would be a coalition of ten nations or world rulers that will seek to rule the entire world in the end days. The 120 in the upper room had to wait ten days for the apocalyptic outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but they were not told it would be ten days – Pentecost - and the number ten speaks of times of faith and patience through times of trial and testing (Deuteronomy 8:2). And we are in times of trial and testing and patience on such a global scale like never before.

I’m revisiting last week’s talk about Daniel’s apocalyptic prophecy in Daniel in chapter 2 about King Nebuchadnezzar having a dream where he saw a vision of a great statue that had a head of gold and shoulders and arms of silver and an abdomen and thighs of brass and legs of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay. And a stone was supernaturally cut out from a mountain, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Daniel said to the king ‘There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will come to pass in the latter days – the end times. (Daniel 2:28) This vision depicts the nature of the world kingdoms from Babylon down to the present day and history shows us the dates when these world kingdoms actually ruled. The Scripture goes on to say ‘And in the days of those rulers the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed…It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever’…The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”

The actual feet of iron and clay represents a multitude of global rulers that are already in existence and have been for some years with we don’t know how many years to go before the identity of the ten toes is fully revealed (Apocalypto). I believe that the overall ‘feet nations’ – not the toes - are current global nations made up of both harsh totalitarian governments and fragile democracies that are currently attempting to mix together through trade and political alliances but who cannot form a lasting bond. And in the meantime apocalyptic events are cascading upon the world at an alarming rate. Daniel’s prophecy was pointing to what would happen in the ‘latter days’ and he placed those ‘latter days’ events in the time frame of being ‘in the now and not yet days of those rulers.’ That means in the apocalyptic days of the global nations out from which would one day emerge those ten rulers who attempt to rule the earth.

The great stone represents Jesus Christ over his Kingdom of faithful people. That Kingdom smites the image on the feet and ten toes of a ten-nation world empire destined to yet emerge at the end of the age, whenever that will be – now and not yet. The feet are present now but the toes have yet to emerge on the world stage and be identified. So I believe we are in the ‘days’ of preparation when God will set up his end time Kingdom in a new measure of spiritual power and authority to be revealed in greater measure in God’s people than ever before in the earth. Indeed, there is a wind of the Spirit blowing in the Church exposing much darkness in the Church and at the same time revealing more light and truth to the Church for those seeking God and his Kingdom. The Now and Not yet theme is mentioned four times book of Revelation where it refers to Jesus as the one who is and was and is to come.

God’s people will be God’s living stones supernaturally cut out of a mountain and built together as God’s dwelling place in the earth – God’s House, the Church. The prophet Haggai said ‘I will shake all nations… and I will fill my house (Church)with glory…The glory of this latter house (Church) shall be greater than the former, says the LORD (Haggai 2:6-9). In the days of Haggai that Scripture was prophetic not only for Israel and for the Church – but for each of us individually as his House, as temples of the Holy Spirit. The ’setting up’ of this Kingdom is a work in process – now and not yet.
The apocalyptic culmination of political darkness and evil in the earth will be the ten toed nations. The apocalyptic culmination of Spiritual light in the earth will be the Bride of Christ. These are both works in progress – now and not yet. One is a work of corruption and will be the work of man and one is the work of purification and will be the work of God’s grace.

Ephesians 5:15, because we live in times of much corruption see that you walk responsibly and diligently and wisely, redeeming the time thoughtfully, seeking to understand what the will of the Lord is. (NKJ)
On a personal level in this apocalyptic time of change this will mean thoughtfully assessing our way of seeing things and doing things and inviting God into the reordering and redeeming of what we might think of as the lost or wasted times of our past. We can now become aware of his appointed times of new beginnings for us with a new understanding of his will for an ‘all things new’ future for our lives.

This becomes a new way of living in the grace of God amidst the outer turmoil and darkness and disorder of the world. Paul must have asked himself at times ‘Why am I in prison, why did I get shipwrecked, beaten up, ignored and insulted? The answer for Paul was - that is where Jesus was. And we can be where Jesus is at any time by his grace, with all things working together for his design and purpose to come to pass in our lives.

The world cannot take us to where only God destined us to be. God moves forward with his overall plan for the world, and he moves forward with his designated plan for our lives. There is an energy which directs us, moves us and carries us, even though we cannot see where it is taking us. That energy is the hidden power of the wind of the Spirit which blows where it wills, and God’s apocalyptic changes happen gradually and then suddenly, perhaps after times of enduring patiently through times of difficulty.
We cannot see our final destination but with this kind of faith we see through the present disorder of this world system, and we can enter into the eternal order of God’s Kingdom. God’s grace lifts us across the bridge from the world of fear and stress into his world of stillness and rest where we can learn to trust that we are being carried by the power of his grace to becoming who we should be and doing what we should be doing.
The true Church is out there somewhere – Now and not yet.
The Bride of Christ is in there somewhere – Now and not yet.
The true self God designed for you to be is within you somewhere – Now and not yet.

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DANIELS PROPHECY OF THE END TIME KINGDOMS
I want to revisit my last talk about the Lord’s prayer which says ‘Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’. In that talk I mentioned prophesies from Daniel and Revelation about the disruption of worldly kingdoms in the end times. I’m discussing today the link between the prayer of ‘Your Kingdom Come’ and visions that Daniel saw concerning the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven in greater measure in the days to come.

The Book of Daniel is a key book in the unlocking of revelation concerning the prophetic purposes of God, particularly concerning end-time events in the ‘latter days’ and there are other visions of Daniel and Revelation that enlarge upon this basic vision. I want to share these prophesies not as dogma but because I have a conviction about the meaning of these prophesies and their relevance to the days in which we live and my approach will be to let Scripture interpret Scripture – all I can do is submit this approach for your discernment.
Daniel was one of the Jews living in captivity after Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon conquered Jerusalem and took hundreds of thousands of Jews into captivity for seventy years. God gave Daniel favour in the court of the king who found Daniel ‘ten times better’ than all the magicians and astrologers that were in his realm in all matters of wisdom and understanding. We can compare how God gave Joseph and Moses favour with Pharaoh.

In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar had a dream where he saw a vision of a great statue that had a head of gold and shoulders and arms of silver and an abdomen and thighs of brass and legs of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay. And a stone was cut out from a mountain but not by human hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. This vision terrified the king, and he demanded that whoever was chosen to interpret the dream for him had to get it right or he would be killed. and when Daniel heard this, he prayed and asked for guidance and mercy from God and he offered to interpret the dream.

This vision may be one of the most important prophetic visions in the Bible since it lays the foundation for the rest of the book of Daniel and also the Book of Revelation or the apocalypse of John. This vision also gives an understanding of many other end-time events. Daniel said to the king ‘There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will come to pass in the latter days (ah???rîyt? yom – time of the end) (Daniel 2:28) and the ‘latter days’ refers to what would happen to Israel and the Church and the world in the end times. This vision depicts the nature of the world kingdoms from Babylon down to the present day and history shows us the dates when these kingdoms ruled.
Daniel gives the king the interpretation that God showed to him.
Firstly Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold, representing the Babylonian empire from 606 BC according to history(v.12)

Secondly He told the king that the two shoulders and arms of silver represented the cruel double empire of Medo-Persia which would overtake his kingdom (in 536 BC - history)

Thirdly Daniel told the king that the kingdom of the abdomen and thighs of bronze would defeat the Medes and Persians. And history show that this was Greece –Alexander the Great, (331-333 BC)

Fourthly There were two legs of iron which would break in pieces and subdue all the other nations. History show us that this was the Roman Empire which would defeat the kingdom of Greece in 63 BC and rule the entire known world. The significance of the two legs of iron is that the Roman empire would later be divided into the Eastern and Western Empires. And the political and cultural and religious disparity between East and West still remains.

The fifth and final worldly kingdom of the feet and ten toes of a mixture of iron and clay speaks of a ten-nation world power that will emerge at the end of the age. And we read the emergence of that divided and divisive kingdom in Daniel 2:41’And as you saw that the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the fragile clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw the iron mixed with fragile clay, so they will mix with one another in posterity (zera), but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.
The iron in the feet is the expression of the ongoing nature of harsh dictatorial rule that represented the Roman empire in the statue. And the fragile earthly clay represents people. God made Man from the dust of the earth. And that clay speaks of government by the people for the people - democracy. This mixture of dictatorships and democracies mixing together but not holding together is a picture of the fragile nature of our global political and economic community that we see today and have for some years. This ten nation configuration of power is seen in the book of Revelation 17:12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings.
These kingdom rulers will one day join forces from amongst the global prominent nations in Europe and Asia and Africa and the Middle east and the Americas and Oceana and the South Pacific – down under. It is a remarkable fact of history that there has never been a conventional war between two democracies, but today we see Russia as a dictatorship attacking Ukraine which is a democracy, and we see China threatening Taiwan, a democratic republic, and Israel being attacked by Hamas and other Islamic terrorist entitles. The differences between the ideologies and cultures of these two distinct rules of order will never hold together for long.

The Scripture says ‘they will mix with one another in posterity (Hebrew = zera = posterity which means planning together for a forever future. But we know they will not hold together despite the trade agreements and so-called treaties. So that ten toed kingdom is a configuration of ten nations that will plan to rule their world together forever, and this reflects their arrogance or hubris. The word hubris in the original Greek means an ‘insolent presumption towards God’. This is seen in the corrupt and oppressive political and financial power that is becoming rampant in these days.

Then the vision goes on to say that a Great Stone smites the image on the feet (10 toed kingdom). And Daniel says ‘And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever’,
Daniel interprets the great Stone as the Kingdom of Heaven and goes on to say ‘just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold and it shall stand forever. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
I believe that the ’days of those kings’ has already begun and I believe we are living in times of global events that even the media are calling apocalyptic. And who or what is the great stone?
The stone/rock represents Jesus Christ over his faithful people and the rock smites the image of a ten-nation world empire at this end of the age. Jesus said “on this rock I will build my church (Matt 16:18). God’s people will reflect the rule of love and faith and justice of the Kingdom of Heaven, and this stone is cut out of a mountain without human hands. This is in stark contrast to the building of the tower of Babel, where man-made brick (beno – baked gleaming white bricks) is used to build a kingdom that will rule forever and reach to Heaven, just like the 10 toed kingdom. And that kingdom was scattered just as will be the final man-made kingdom that plans to rule forever.
‘In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed’ . I submit to you that means that at some time and I have no idea when, by the grace of God and through the Holy Spirit the Kingdom of Heaven will begin to be expressed in greater measure in God’s people than ever before in the earth. This will prepare a people who understand what it means to believe and pray ‘Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ they will desire the will of God in their lives more than their own. It is time to be guided by the Holy Spirit to hear what God is saying to his people corporately and individually and to see with eyes of faith what he is doing from Heaven and to be part of that being done in the earth.

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ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
The Lord’s Prayer says Our Father who is in heaven holy is your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we say your Kingdom come, we are not talking about the afterlife but about God’s Kingdom being experienced here on earth. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. Psalm 103:19

The Kingdom of God rules over all other kingdoms on the earth and God desires that his rule and order in heaven is expressed in the earth. However, most people are living only under the rule of one of a multitude of different kinds of kingdoms in the earth, ranging from dictatorships through democracies and on to superstitious religious or tribal cultures. And most people only see an earthly kingdom in action and are not aware that a heavenly Kingdom even exists let alone its being in command of all that happens on earth. I believe we are living in days when God is opening peoples’ eyes to see his Heavenly Kingdom being displayed on earth.

A kingdom is a governmental rule of order presided over by a ruler. There are thousands of political kingdoms in the world and there is a multitude of ‘rules of order’ and different ways to protect and enforce that rule of order.
Australia is a parliamentary democracy that is directly and indirectly under a Monarchy that has vowed to honour and serve God as the overarching rule.
America is a republic that has declared ‘In God we trust’ and that they are ‘A nation under God’. As to how faithfully those two governmental systems serve that Godly rule depends on the integrity and sincerity of the political leadership in maintaining those spiritual and cultural foundations. At the moment those foundations are being eroded, and God is holding everyone to account.
If Australia became a republic, who would designate what would be the overarching rule and value that we upheld, and who would protect and enforce what that overarching rule and value would be from that time on for our lives, and who would appoint the leader? Maybe just leave it to the politicians? - think about that when there’s a referendum. But for us the Bible says ‘pray for rulers and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence’(1Timothy2).
Our constant mindset of prayer remains as ‘Your Kingdom come’.
People today also create their own personal kingdoms of rule and order over whatever overarching ideologies they choose to embody, so there is a lot at play when it comes to discussing whose will gets done on earth as it is in Heaven.

In the Old Testament Israel saw much evidence of the rule of a Heavenly Kingdom in the earth through miraculous interventions of God in their life. Things were seen being done in Heaven that were also being done on the earth.
Elisha saw into the heavens that God’s angels were defeating the Syrian army that were fighting against Israel at the place where Elisha and Gehazi were staying, so he said to his terrified servant Gehazi ‘Fear not: for greater are they that are with us than they that are against us. And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray that you would open his eyes, that he may see. (2Kings 6:1) God opened Gehazi’s eyes to see the Heavenly battle.
Daniel was praying to God and saw the four winds of heaven in turmoil churning up the seas (Daniel 7). Daniel saw four great beasts that prophetically symbolise powerful earthly kingdoms that still exist today also disrupting the churning seas, and the seas symbolise the global population. And in the Book of Revelation chapter 13 this same vision of kingdom disorder and disruption gets prophetically amplified as something yet to occur globally in the nations of today’s world. There is much that needs to come to pass in history yet, but we could be seeing the beginnings of this unfolding before our eyes at this time. We are living in a time of the clashing of kingdoms. ‘All things are being shaken and the things that are man-made will be removed, so that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, and are given grace, by which we may serve God’ (Hebrews 12:27)

In the New Testament we need eyes of faith to ‘see’ the Kingdom of God. Jesus always saw the Kingdom of God and he also saw the kingdom of the earth and lived in both. He did not live a secular life that was separate from his spiritual life, but the Kingdom of God was his true reality. He saw what was done in heaven being done in the earth. He put God first and he did what he saw his Father do. One day Jesus said to the listening crowds “Truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son does also.
For Jesus things happened twice – God did it in Heaven and Jesus did it on earth. God’s will was done on earth as it had been done in heaven. He teaches us that in the lord’s Prayer.

The Father showed Jesus how Lazarus was to be raised from the dead when everyone was telling Jesus to come and heal him. The Father showed Jesus through the Holy Spirit the multitudes being fed with the miraculous loaves and fishes. Jesus saw the lame man take up his bed and walk at the pool of Bethesda and then spoke it into being.

How do we see the Kingdom of Heaven and live a life that expresses the Heavenly Kingdom of God in the earth? Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, unless one is born from above (anothen) he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3).
When people ask when we will see the Kingdom of heaven being active in the earth the only answer is – when it starts to be seen in our lives – as the love and compassion and the justice and mercy and truth that is in Christ. If we ask for the Holy Spirit to become active in our lives we will be guided by the Holy Spirit to hear what God is saying to us and see with eyes of faith what he showing us to do. We will pray prayers of surrender to receive God’s answers and get his results rather than our demands for our own wishes. Paul says that the devil’s strategy is to blind people’s minds to see the things that God is doing from Heaven -The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the message of the glory of Christ (2Corinthians 4:6) But the Bible also says that ‘Greater is he who is within you than he who is in the world (1John 4:4).
When we have faith in the work of the Kingdom of God in Heaven, we begin to understand the spiritual reality that God’s will in Heaven is waiting to happen on earth in our lives and that becomes our new reality for everything we aspire to.
We may not see the spiritual battles going on in the heavens like Elisha, but we can often sense the spiritual oppression and know that there is an activity of darkness happening and we can have faith that God is at work in the world of the unseen to overcome that darkness and to shield us from it. We can trust that the Holy Spirit will bring his word alive to us as we read the Scriptures and that things will unfold in our lives that we realise only God could have arranged for us, and things on earth will start to become what is being done in heaven in front of our eyes.

There are things happening on the world stage that reveal the disorder and disruption by ungodly religious and cultural and Marxist dictatorships that defy the rule of law and seek to demolish democratic principles that honour the God of the Bible. This is happening in the Middle East where Israel is being attacked from all sides, and it is happening in too many other democratic nations from within. Godly foundations are being eroded through weak national leaderships that grasp for worldly power through corrupt and deceitful means. We live in a nation that has been given the Gospel but it has become indifferent to it over the years in its preference for the ‘good life’. But the good life is fast becoming the not so good life, and the tide is turning on the failed social and political experiments of recent times. This coming year will be a defining year for our nation as we take hold of What Jesus has already won for this nation. God is raising up his Kingdom in this Great South land of the Holy Spirit and we can personally expect to receive his grace for his Kingdom to be on display in our lives. Israel had to possess Canaan the Land of Promise (Numbers 34) which measured 300,000 square miles which is 777,000 square kilometres of territory (300,000X2.59) but the land of Promise that God wants possessed today is the territory of people’s hearts to believe and ‘receive the promise of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ (Gatatians 3:14). God has gone before us to ‘Go in and possess the land’. Your heart of faith and love can be a window for the hearts of others to see the Kingdom and a door for others to enter into the Kingdom.

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The Journey of the Wise Men

Ancient Babylon was home to the first civilization to study the stars, and some wise men called Magi, who were scholars and astronomers noticed something extraordinary in the heavens. For centuries, these wise men had studied the Jewish prophecies passed down during Israel’s captivity in Babylon, and those prophesies included the foretelling of a Messiah. When an unusually bright convergence of planets began to shine as an apparent brilliant star in the eastern sky, they interpreted it as the sign of a great ruler’s birth. Ancient astronomers didn’t distinguish planets from stars but interpreted them as ‘wandering stars’.

The Magi (and the Bible doesn’t say how many there were) then set out on a long journey westward, heading to where this bright star shone. The distance from Babylon to Jerusalem is about 1000 kilometres and it is estimated that it would have taken weeks to months to finally arrive. And the Gospel of Matthew says In the days of Herod the king, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it arose and have come to worship him (Matthew 2:1). Jesus was born when the star first arose, and their arrival in Jerusalem was quite some time later.
Their inquiries about the “new king of the Jews” reached the ears of Herod the Great, the local ruler, appointed by Rome, and he was deeply unsettled. Herod feared this child might threaten his dynasty, a potential Messiah heralding a kingdom that could upend his tenuous grip on power.

Summoning his religious advisors, Herod demanded answers. The scribes pointed to the ancient prophecy of Micah, which pinpointed Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah. With cunning pretence, Herod secretly met the Magi, urging them to locate the child (paidion) – a young child, not brephos – a babe – Luke 2), and report back so he could “worship” him too. Satisfied that his plan to eliminate this rival was foolproof, Herod congratulated himself on his deceit.
The Wise Men continued their journey, guided by the radiant star, and Matthew writes And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: (Matthew 2:11). SO - the star rested over a house in Bethlehem (not out in a stable in a field, but in a kaluma, a guest room in the family home of Joseph - after the other guests had long left and where Mary and Joseph would have stayed on with the child Jesus for some time after the birth). Inside, the wise men found the child, Jesus, with Mary and Joseph. And they reverently knelt and worshipped him, presenting gifts of profound spiritual significance:
Gold symbolises God’s divine nature and kingship. (Exodus 25:10, Hebrews 9:4)
Frankincense, this incense represent prayer and spiritual devotion. (Psalm 141)
Myrrh foretells the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. (Mark 15:23).

That night, all their plans changed. Warned in a dream by an angel not to return to Herod, the Magi departed by another route. Meanwhile, the same angel appeared to Joseph, instructing him to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath.

Realizing the Magi had outwitted him, Herod erupted in a fury, and he ordered the massacre of all male children in Bethlehem under the age of two. This event is a remarkable replay of the story of Pharoah ordering the massacre of all male children at the time of the birth of Moses. Pharoah, like Herod feared for his own dynasty, and Moses became the deliverer/saviour of Israel and Jesus became the deliverer/saviour of the world.
But Herod’s reign of terror was short-lived and after his death, an angel appeared to Joseph again, instructing him to return to Israel. But learning that Herod’s son, Antipas, ruled Judea with more cruelty than his father, Joseph was wary, and being guided once more by the angel, he led his family to Galilee, settling in the quiet town of Nazareth.

The birth of Jesus was written in the stars, and the Bible says that the stars speak forth the knowledge of God. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God and his splendour is written in the stars. Each day utters promise to the next day, and the night sky unveils knowledge to us all. Without a sound without a word and not a voice being heard - The world can hear its silent shout as everywhere his truth goes out. (Psalm 19:1-4) - The life of Jesus, the Word revealed in the skies

The journey of the Wise Men, steeped in prophecy and faith, speaks to us of the precision of how God’s plans unfold in our lives also, even in the midst of human schemes and suffering and our own mistakes and frailties.
God wrote the narrative of the life of Jesus and he has written the narrative of our lives – David said in Psalm 139 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! (Psalms 139:16)
There is a book about you with your name written on it and there are special events ordered by God on record that God has purposed for you. These special events are called ‘Kairos times’. There are two kinds of times in the Bible – the special eternal Kairos time event and Chronos time – clock time - with its seconds and minutes and hours and years of ordinary day to day time that passes away.
Jesus lived in both Chronos time and Kairos time like all of us. Not everything in the everyday clock time life of Jesus needs to be in the Bible because it is not merely a history book but a book of revelation and faith and purpose and meaning concerning the eternal work of God. We have been reading about the eternal Kairos event of the birth of Jesus - and the visitation of the wise men when eternal light shone as a wandering star at his birth. And so it is with us - God’s book about us is not merely a history book of but a narrative of the eternal purpose and meaning that he has planned for our lives.
I believe that we are living in a time when God is restoring his Kairos events for us that we may have lost or neglected throughout the Chronos minutes and years of our busy everyday lives. But God is restoring those years – not in clock time but in our awakenings to his Kairos purpose and meaning to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.
That is for all of us – all of humanity, and this signifies forgiveness and restoration of his eternal purposes for us. This is what brings a renewed connection with God and forgiveness and the healing of our souls.
We don’t get the Chronos years back, but we can miraculously get the Kairos events back. We can have ten years of lost eternal Kairos opportunities restored in a few Chronos weeks or months – and I’m seeing that happen in people right now. In fact the Apostle Paul saw one Kairos moment restore his entire past on the road to Damascus, and then he learned to manage living in both time frames in perfect harmony.
There is a bright star continually shining in the heavens for us to unveil a life of fulfilment in God. It is time to let God begin to rewrite our narrative and we will have so much to be thankful for. We can let God rewrite his eternal events back into our life when we interrupt our busy clock time and ask God to awaken us to the present moment Kairos experience of partnership with him, learning to infuse our natural time frame with God’s supernatural time frame of eternal purpose and meaning.

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NEWBORN KING
Caesar Augustus as the emperor of Rome decreed that a census be held so that everyone in the empire could be taxed according to their property ownership and other possessions. They all had to go to their place of birth to be registered so Joseph who was of the house and lineage of King David had to take Mary to Bethlehem, to his family home. The Scriptures had prophesied that the true King of Peace would be born in Bethlehem at that very time, in a small village nearly five thousand miles distance from the palace of another king, Caesar Augustus in Rome. And we read the amazing prophecy of Micah, over seven hundred years earlier that declared that Bethlehem would be the place of the birth of Jesus.

Micah 5:2. O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!” God will allow his people to become subject to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last these fellow countrymen—the exile remnants of Israel—will rejoin their nation in their own land. And he (The Son) shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall remain there safely, for he will be greatly honoured all around the world. He will be our Peace.

Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven-hundred-year-old prophesy of his birthplace, and becoming the King of Peace.
Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary, and the journey was tiresome for Mary, and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season, and they did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place where the animals slept and fed.
Joseph saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could. Then Mary gave birth to her child and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father.
On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, being celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom have scarce idea of what is really being celebrated.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the Newborn King of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” The angelic song about this new creation in the world was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation of the world as we read in the book of Job after God challenges Job and says ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined, and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? (Job 38:4,7,8).

When the angels’ singing had stopped, the shepherds were guided to the place where this extraordinary event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross that would come one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. Jesus had declared this mystery of the human/ Divine intersection of life and being when he prayed to the Father in front of the disciples “I have given them the glory you gave me—the glorious unity of being one, as we are— I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one—so that the world will know you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me. (John 17:22)
This Divine intersection of our being with God is how we get to ‘know God’. The Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person.
1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need to learn another person’s personal perception of God to know what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true.
This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need in any given situation and at any given time. That is what Jesus accomplished for us. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith.
Christmas waits to be truly celebrated within this understanding. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him. Amen

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MESSAGE AND MESSENGERS
Before the fall of Adam and Eve, God the Father's plan was already in motion to bring about a new creation of humanity in the earth combining God and humanity in his Son, Jesus. This was not an afterthought of God after the fall but a divine plan for union of human mortality and Divine immortality (John 11:26), giving humanity a path to oneness with God, and Jesus was fully aware of this from before time began, knowing that becoming human was the only way for humanity to experience the fullness of God's love, and he would become its most perfect expression.

For ages, the earth suffered under the weight of its brokenness. Humanity was lost, unable to heal itself. Suspicion and hostility toward Father God, sown by Lucifer, had led to a distorted view of God in the earth. Many saw Him as distant and judgmental, fostering a religion of fear and appeasement. But God had a greater answer-not a set of rituals or rules, but Himself. Jesus, as God and man, would bridge the gap between heaven and earth. He would step out of eternity and into time, exchanging pure Spirit existence for Divine within human existence.

In this grand mission, the Holy Spirit played an essential role. The Spirit would partner with Jesus, sharing every moment of His earthly life. This partnership ensured that the Holy Spirit, too, would intimately experience human existence. After Jesus completed His mission, the Holy Spirit would continue the work of revealing God's love and drawing humanity into communion with the Divine.

To begin this new chapter, God sent a Divine seed to earth, choosing Mary, a young and humble woman, to receive it. The angel Gabriel appeared to her, announcing that she had been chosen to bear a child-Jesus, the Son of God. Although Mary was initially confused, having never been with a man, Gabriel explained that the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and she would conceive a child by Divine power. He reassured her that this was God's will, and Mary, in faith and humility, responded, "Let it be done unto me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).

Mary was betrothed to a man called Joseph and in the cultural context of Mary and Joseph, betrothal was a formal, legal agreement between families, often formalized with a written contract (ketubah) and the couple was considered legally married, so if there was a breach of honour to that contract, either party could initiate divorce proceedings.
The betrothal period typically lasted about a year, and during this time, the bride remained in her parents' home, and the groom prepared a place for their future life together, often by building or preparing a home.

When Joseph discovered that Mary was going to have a child he was deeply troubled but he resolved to act with compassion, planning to quietly divorce her. However, an angel appeared to him in a dream, telling him that Mary's child was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would save His people from their sins. Joseph obeyed the angel's command, and he took Mary as his wife while refraining from consummating their marriage until Jesus was born.

Following Gabriel's announcement, Mary journeyed to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was also experiencing a miraculous pregnancy. Elizabeth, though elderly and previously unable to conceive, was carrying John the Baptist, who would prepare the way for Jesus. When Mary greeted her cousin, Elizabeth's unborn child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" (Luke 1:42). Mary responded with a song of praise, glorifying God for His faithfulness and mercy.

Elizabeth gave birth to her son, and her neighbours and relatives rejoiced with her. At the circumcision ceremony, it was assumed the child would be named Zechariah, after his father. However, Elizabeth insisted he be named John, and when questioned, Zechariah, who had been struck mute for doubting Gabriel's prophecy, wrote the name John on a clay tablet and Immediately, his voice returned, and he praised God. This moment marked the end of a long silence, both for Zechariah and for the people of Israel. Zecharia being struck mute for a season of time was symbolic of Israel, who had not heard a prophetic voice for 400 years since the prophecy of Malachi. Malachi's prophesy came from the last verse of the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament, and the final words of Malachi declared that God would send the prophet Elijah before the coming of the Messiah and that he would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts if the fathers to their children.

Zechariah, under the prophetic anointing of the Holy Spirit, prophesied over John, declaring, "You, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people in the forgiveness of their sins" (Luke 1:76-77). John's life and ministry would pave the way for the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah. When John the Baptist began his ministry of preparing the way for Jesus many in Israel believed that he was Elijah whom Malachi had prophesied about, and even Jesus said that John had come in the spirit of Elijah - This is the one about whom it is written: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. (Matthew 11)
During that 400 year spiritual silence from the time of Malachi God's people had been waiting for a clear word, a new revelation of his presence among them, Emmanuel. This silence reflected the darkness and disorder of a world longing for hope and direction. With John's ministry and Jesus' baptism, this silence was fully broken for all the world to hear God and have his presence amongst them.
And today, we find ourselves in a similar time of waiting through another season of relative silence from Heaven into a world that is rife with uncertainty, division, and spiritual disconnection. Many voices in this global culture clamour for attention yet rarely bring clarity or wisdom.
But in the midst of this, God is stirring the hearts of His people, to hear his voice and to awaken others and turn their hearts back to him. Just as John's mission was to prepare the way for Jesus, the Holy Spirit is working in us who believe to bring light and hope to the world.

This preparation doesn't rely on loud proclamations or dramatic gestures but on God's people hearing his voice and responding with consistent acts of love and faith as he moves through our everyday lives inspiring us to reflect God's mercy and truth in our everyday interactions.
Zechariah's regained voice reminds us that God's word always comes at the appointed time. As we await a fresh movement of the Spirit, we can take comfort in knowing that God is never silent without purpose. In these moments of waiting, God prepares us to receive and share a deeper level of being in his presence amongst us, Emmanuel. When His voice breaks through, it will be with clarity, cutting through the confusion of the world.

Malachi prophesied before the 400 years of silence that God would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to their children at the time of his first coming into the world - and in the days of his second coming into the world. Today this means that there will be a grace upon families that will become reunited in the love of God and one another, seen as simple yet powerful acts of kindness, and words of encouragement, and lives grounded in compassion that become beacons of hope. This is how the Holy Spirit works today, just as He did in the time of Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist. Jesus chose ordinary people and God accomplished extraordinary things, drawing the world closer to His heart.

As Zechariah declared, "The tender mercy of our God, by which the Daystar shall visit us from on high, will give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, guiding our feet into the way of peace" (Luke 1:78-79). This promise remains true for us today. In the midst of the darkness of today's world of chaos, the light of God's love is beginning to shine. As we choose to live in that love and its light, we will witness the hand of God bringing order out of chaos and bringing unity, hope, and peace to people in our own personal world.

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PRINCE OF PEACE
Isaiah prophesied around 720 BC about a time and a place where great light would confront great darkness (Isaiah 9:2). The great light that he writes about occurred with the birth of Jesus, the first Christmas around two thousand years ago, and the place was in the Middle east in a region called Galilee of the Gentiles, where the darkness of the tyranny of the Roman empire had overcome all the nations and cultures that opposed it.
Isaiah 9:2 By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan in Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; And for those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death a light has shined upon them
Isaiah writes further about Jesus as that great light and the Prince of Peace…
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David forever more. The dedication of the LORD of hosts will do this.
In the time of Jesus, Galilee of the Gentiles was a place where idolatrous darkness opposed the one true religion called Judaism. And even Judaism opposed itself from within through doctrines of legalism and hypocrisy and pride, and this caused Jesus to tell them at that time that ‘they had missed their day of visitation (Luk 19:44). Galilee of the Gentiles was the battlefield of good against evil and of light against darkness, but it was to become the wellspring of life out of death.
Jesus, the light of the world of the first Christmas lived in Galilee of the Gentiles, which was under the control of the Roman Empire. He grew up in the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum and announced his ministry in Nazareth at 30 years of age when he preached in the synagogue to the Jewish people of his own hometown and said,
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted and to proclaim liberty for the captives (Luke 4). After saying this, the Jews whom he had grown up with were incensed with anger and wanted to push him over a cliff.
He was the great light that shone among that region of darkness, but the nation of Israel remained blinded to that light. However, the Apostle Paul wrote that this blindness would be lifted in the end times before his return – blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11:25).

After three and a half years of his ministry Jesus would finally go to Jerusalem where he would die for all mankind and rise again from the dead, and to where he would return at the end of the age. At that time he will overcome the final rebellious assault of great darkness against the power of his kingdom of great light. Isaiah’s prophecy would then find its fulfillment through Jesus the Prince of Peace whose Kingdom will never end Amen.

And over two thousand years after the first Christmas, the world remains in great darkness, longing for a great light. Paradoxically, while Christmas is celebrated annually as a festive holiday, the miraculous significance of its great light is mostly misunderstood, along with the profound darkness that pervades a corrupt world. This darkness is also evident in the growing determination of many people to destroy Israel. The world is currently witnessing an increasing hatred of Jews which Jesus prophesied to his followers in Matthew when he said ‘and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake….and then will the end come…(Matthew 24:9f)’. This hatred is currently being fueled by certain sections of politics and the global media. At the same time, many Jewish rabbis and religious Orthodox Jews worldwide are fervently awaiting their promised Messiah.
A great light is poised to shine, signaling God’s loving desire of good will for all people. Israel, who did not receive him and who missed the day of his (first) visitation will finally be gathered together and brought into his great light, and we who have believed and yet not seen him will also be his signs of light and hope in today’s world as the Prince of Peace.
Peace, (Eirene in Greek), speaks of oneness, harmony, and togetherness, and just as different musical notes can create harmonious chords to be played in a symphony, we too can align our will with God’s will, and bring that same peace and harmony and goodwill into our relationships. This harmony is grounded in trusting that God is always working on our behalf in unseen ways. And that is the core essence of our faith. God is the composer and conductor of life’s grand symphony. He alone knows what lies ahead, orchestrating the course of history and the details of our individual lives. The choice is ours: will we invite Him to play in our band, or will we choose to play in His grand orchestra? ‘For we are his masterpiece (workmanship - poi??ma- production,), created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God had prepared beforehand for us to walk in’. Ephesians 2:10

Jesus knew that his father God had prepared all the supernatural works for his Son to walk in and he declared this when he said ‘The Son can do nothing – only what he sees his Father doing… John 5:19J. Jesus saw what Father had already done. Jesus didn’t hurry to go and heal Lazarus – He saw what the father had done, and he raised Lazarus from the dead. It is the same with us if we look at that picture of being in harmony with God as like being part of his orchestra. The conductor knows the score – and Jesus followed his Father’s timing just as we are called to follow God’s timing as our Conductor in his orchestra. The Bible says that God makes everything beautiful in ITS time … whatever God does shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God does it, that men should be in awe of Him. That which is has already been, And what is to be has already been (Eccl. 3:11f). And our role is not to rush but to wait patiently, like an instrument resting through symphonic pauses.
We pray Lord that we do not miss our day of visitation but be mindful that as our Emmanuel, our God with us, your day of visitation is an invitation for us to join you every day all day. Amen.
Paul O’Sullivan - spiritcode.podbean.com - pauloss@me.com

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GOSPEL PARABLES 16 GOOD SAMARITAN
The background to this parable is yet another story about the Jewish Pharisees and legalists taking opportunity to appear righteous in front of Jesus for the sake of impressing the crowds. To do this they would pose theological questions to Jesus for which they believed they had a smart answer. A lawyer (an expert in Mosaic law) decided he would ask Jesus a question that he could himself answer brilliantly and then parry with Jesus to and fro, and so appear to be as wise if not wiser than Jesus.

Luke 10:25 And then a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered back, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will have life.” But he wanted to justify himself (appear righteous) and said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (pl??sion; a person that is near or close in a variety of ways).
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. (These people are distancing themselves – the opposite to becoming near and close as neighbours)
But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Jesus had just told a story of a man who was found beaten and helpless and left for dead. When Jesus told them that a priest came by, the crowd’s hopes were raised, only to fall when he passed by without helping. Next, a Levite arrived, and the crowd’s hope rose once more, but he too distanced himself from the injured man, leaving the crowd wondering about who was next. The crowd might have expected a Jewish man to be the hero, and perhaps this story was about the privileged religious leaders of the day, but Jesus was not trying to make that statement, and in any case, many may have even excused the priests and Levites, knowing that priests and Levites were bound by special rules when it came to touching the dead. (Jesus was saying something else) - And the big surprise was that a despised Samaritan was the compassionate hero in the story and what he did highlighted the true meaning of mercy and loving our neighbour.

Jesus is not making a point that Samaritans are better people than Jews, or that all priests and Levites are hard hearted people. The shock element of who is who in this story is more about the fact that you can’t predict where and when true compassion is going to occur just by having preconceived ideas about a person’s role or status or tribal identity. The parable points out that genuine mercy and compassion is always seen when one person helps another person who is in a helpless or vulnerable or deprived situation by coming close rather than by distancing themselves. And the real issue here is that Jesus proclaims showing mercy as I would say the core relational value of the Kingdom of God. And this just happens to be the answer that the smart lawyer finally gives to Jesus about ‘who is my neighbour’. The Lawyer decisively said to Jesus ‘The one who showed him mercy.’

It is mercy that generates closeness and acceptance and mercy responds to the vulnerability that we all feel as limited human beings. This is also seen in God’s creation even by animals of all varieties in coming to the aid of a helpless young fledgling of a totally different and distinct species. God has woven his mercy into the world of all living creatures. A big goose mothering a baby cat and a cat playing with a baby bird (and 100 more examples)

There is a lot of talk about mercy and compassion these days but sometimes it seems kind of shallow like a superficial compassion. It's more about looking merciful and virtuous than actually caring, and it's more about having the correct moral high ground than actually helping people. And that can actually lead to some needy people adopting a victim mentality where they start to see themselves as helpless and always needing to be rescued. This can be dangerous because if someone or some special identity group can convince people that they're helpless then they can control them. And in today’s global culture there are people in power that cultivate that kind of dependency to stay in control.

And in this parable Jesus upholds this powerful theme of mercy as the overarching core value of God’s love and compassion throughout the Bible. Mercy is not only a feeling of compassion – it is a healing energy that generates concern and care and closeness like no other demonstration of love and faith. But mercy loses its healing power when it is done out of obligation or duty or condescension or guilt – that is not how God works.
We see God’s powerful nature of mercy and compassion on display everywhere in the Bible and we see it emphasised in the writings of at least seven of the Old Testament prophets. And David in the Psalms passionately proclaims the enduring mercy of God about ninety times.

God’s mercy is first seen in the Bible in the book of Exodus Chapter 25 where God commands Moses to construct a mercy seat to cover the Ark of the Covenant which contained the presence of God in the tabernacle and the temple. It was crafted from pure gold which represented the very nature of God, and it shows how God’s desire is to be intimately near to his people, not distant or removed but right at the centre of Israel’s life and worship. It is the place where God meets humanity, not with condemnation but with a desire to show grace. The mercy seat was flanked by two angelic beings called cherubim, with their wings spread over it and their faces turned toward it as though even the heavenly beings are in awe of God’s loving compassion expressed through His mercy and emphasizing the sacredness of this place.

The nature of God’s mercy is also that it does not ignore sin or negate justice because mercy gives people enough time to consider their attitudes and behaviour and change before the consequences of their behaviour overtake them.
‘The Bible also says The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’ (Lamentations 2:22).
In the New Testament God’s mercy is seen in Hebrews chapter eight where God’s mercy is central to our understanding of how near and close God wants to be with us. The Old Covenant focused on adherence to the Law, and people having to do rituals of washings and sacrifices to come near to him. But in the New Covenant God writes the Commandments in our hearts and Jesus comes to dwell within us and give us his heart of obedience to the Father’s will in all things.
‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people… for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their unrighteousness (being out of alignment with me), and I will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:10)
God’s mercy draws us close to himself by pulling us out of our self-conscious mindset of imperfection and unworthiness which makes us feel at a distance from him. Our sense of helplessness can become a pathway towards God and not a pathway into isolation.

We are called to be vessels of God’s mercy in a world that desperately needs it, and the Holy Spirit within us will always be prompting us to respond mercifully to others as he carries that compassion of the Father and Jesus to those around us. Jesus was ‘moved’ with compassion physically (plagchnizomai – in his inner body) when he saw the helplessness of the crowds around him. (Matthew 14:14).

The Bible says that mercy triumphs over judgement (James2:13) but it also says that people who show no mercy to others will receive judgement without mercy for their wrongdoing in the form of the unpleasant consequences of their wrongdoing. This is a sad reminder of how a person can unwittingly choke off the flow of God’s mercy even to their own self. The key to keeping the flow of God’s mercy open is to start by opening ourselves up to God’s mercy which endures forever. We make it something between God and ourselves and seek to live in his acceptance of us in our weakness and helplessness. That humble movement of our heart towards God is the truest expression of genuine faith that a person can have, and the Bible says that our hearts are purified by faith (Acts 10). From within that sea of God’s mercy we can look with eyes of mercy upon another person in their helplessness and that draws us into their need.

The prompting of the Holy Spirit to pray for someone in their struggles and their helplessness is an exercise of God’s mercy through us, where we can have faith that God is at work supernaturally to draw that person close to him and bring them his strength and comfort. Mercy often looks like patience in everyday interactions because it resists being triggered into resentment or anger. Listening before speaking can invite a person’s heart into God’s mercy simply because they are being heard. Being listened to and heard can often lead to a person being healed. Mercy flows from heaven when we choose to respond with kindness rather than harshness even when someone is being difficult or insensitive. Mercy can simply be believing the best about others, even when there is reason to assume the worst. Mercy means refraining from judgment or harsh criticism and rather seeking to understand someone’s vulnerability. That kind of mercy can allow a person to step out of the shadows of their own darkness and into God’s transforming light.

Paul OSullivan – spiritcode.podbean.com - pauloss@icloud.com

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GOSPEL PARABLES 15 TWO SONS
Today I’m sharing the parable of the Two sons from the Gospel of Matthew (21:28).
The background to the parable of the Two Sons is that the Pharisees and Jewish leaders were strongly resisting what Jesus was saying and doing and questioning his authority, as they had with John the Baptist, so Jesus speaks this parable to them,

Matthew 21:28 “What do you think of this? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I prefer not to,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I will go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you, for the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed John for he came to you as an upright and Godly man and you did not believe him. And even when you saw that, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.

The Godliness and anointing and spiritual authority of John the Baptist was at the centre of the argument that the Jewish leaders were really having about the authority of Jesus - before he spoke the parable of the Two Sons.
What did the Jewish leaders see in John the Baptist that they did not want to believe?
They did not want to see or believe that John the Baptist was from God because if they believed that then they would have to believe that Jesus was also from God. The whole crowd saw John the Baptist baptise Jesus and they all saw the dove of the Holy Spirit appear above the head of Jesus and they heard the voice from Heaven say, ‘this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased’. As well as that, the tax collectors and prostitutes received the baptism of John the Baptist, but the Jewish leaders had refused it.

Jesus is saying a lot here about choices and preferences and our willingness to believe in Jesus and trust him and do what he says, or we may resist and walk our own path of self-advantage. We may give a nod to doing what is right because it looks good but deep down resent that we are not fully in command of our own destiny and desires, and in this story the two sons are being weighed in the balance of either determining their own destinies or doing the will of their father. This Two Sons theme occurs in another three major stories in the Bible - the stories of the prodigal son, and Jacob and Esau, and Cain and Abel.

In the Two Sons parable Jesus is comparing the responses of the tax collectors and prostitutes with the responses of the legalistic Pharisees and Jewish leaders, and the situation in this parable resembles the story of the prodigal son. In the Prodigal Son story the father wants to bless both the sons, but the prodigal son goes his own way then has a change of heart and discovers his heart of gratitude and love and honour for his father. The older son is self-righteous and resentful of the mercy shown to the wayward son, just as the Pharisees are resentful of the mercy Jesus shows to sinners.

In the story of the twins Jacob and Esau, the older twin Esau was entitled to the spiritual inheritance from their father Isaac, but Jacob deeply desired it for himself. And one day after Esau had been out hunting and was hungry he impetuously traded the valuable older son inheritance for a tempting bowl of Jacob’s lentil soup, and later on, Jacob deceived the blind Isaac into blessing him with the sought after inheritance instead of Esau by disguising himself as Esau. And although Jacob initially acted out of self-will, he later repented, and years later, on the eve of his meeting with Esau to make reconciliation, he had an encounter with God and wrestled with God and with his own inner conflicts, and after this encounter God granted Jacob the full blessing of the heavenly inheritance he sought.

The Two Sons parable is also a replay of the Cain and Abel story where Cain is also resentful of the approval that God gives to Abel, who offers a heartfelt sacrificial offering of the best of his flock to God, whereas Cain gives only what he is obliged to give - just like the empty hearted Pharisees. God accepts the offering of Abel but not that of the envious Cain, who murders his brother and is sentenced into exile, to wander as a lonely man with an inner emptiness and bitterness. Cain’s crime of killing Abel is also replayed in the killing of Jesus by the Jewish leaders and the shouts of ‘crucify him’ in front of Pontius Pilate. Cain’s fate of being exiled to wander the earth (Genesis 4:4) is the same as the self-righteous Pharisees who exiled themselves from a merciful and forgiving God. The Bible says that through his sacrificial offering Abel still speaks even though he died (Hebrews 11:4) and how much more through the sacrificial offering of his own life does Jesus still speak even now to all the world.

The story of Jesus is the unique story of the Son who delighted to honour the will of his Father, and who never wavered or had to repent or regret any wrong attitudes, and Jesus stands in the midst of all of these Two Sons stories. Jesus becomes the answer of forgiveness and mercy and hope to us as a wayward humanity represented by the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the prodigal son and the unruly and deceitful Jacob. And if we go astray like lost sheep, he comes to find us.

Jesus through his patience and longsuffering also becomes the remedy to those like the self-righteous Jewish leaders or the entitled older brother of the prodigal son or the disinterested Esau, or the hapless Cain who all remained in their shadow of darkness.
Jesus waits and peers towards the horizon to see their hearts humbled and softened and become willing to return. For a brief moment I let you go your own way, but with great compassion I will gather you… (Isaiah 54:7)
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Jesus has embraced humanity within the length and depth and height of his love. We are the brothers and sisters of Jesus, the sons and daughters of the Father, and heirs together with him of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the Commandments because of his love for his Father and he lives within our hearts as the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus with a desire to do the Father’s will. That means that we too can now fulfill his Commandments because they are now written on our new hearts of faith and love through the Holy Spirit that he has given to us. This redeeming love and mercy and forgiveness of God can be a great encouragement to us when we might have felt we have let God down, but then turn to him, safe within his love. This is also how we can encourage others who may have felt they have wandered too far away from God and feel there is no way back, for he has said. For a brief moment I let you go your own way, but with great compassion I will gather you.

Paul O’Sullivan – spiritcode.podbean.com (pauloss@icloud.com)

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GOSPEL PARABLES 14 A SERVANT MINDSET

The background to this parable in Luke is Jesus answering his apostles when they asked him to increase their faith. He said to them ‘If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.’ Luke 17:6 Having that kind of spiritual authority no doubt impressed them, and they would probably have then expected to hear a master class tutorial on gaining great faith. But in the next verse Jesus taught them a parable about having a servant mindset.
Verse 7 Which one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep would say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was assigned to him? It’s the same with you, so when you have done all you were told to do, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

They would have had no problem agreeing with what Jesus said about servants. There weren’t any workplace relation issues in those days or fair-work conditions or overtime. The point was that a servant worked until the day’s work was done, and certainly wouldn’t expect to sit down in scruffy work clothes and have a meal before the master of the house had eaten, as preparing the master’s meal was part of the day’s work anyway. And that meant having to wash and put on the right clothing and then having their own meal separately.
They would have agreed about no thankyous or bonuses – work is work and serving is serving - so get used to it. And being an unworthy servant simply points to the relative status of master and servant. It does not mean being a worthless servant – because they get fired. So what is the takeaway here in this parable?

There are a few stipulations that get special mention – know your place – Don’t expect privilege or applause and dress appropriately, and implicit in this is don’t grumble. And while these are fine qualities for a good employee the message just doesn’t send the soul heavenwards. In fact, there appears to be nothing inspiring about this parable at all.

But then Heaven lifts this mundane story into its highest glory and we see that Jesus is giving the apostles the key to unlocking the Kingdom power of God into the world - a master class of the dawning of a new kind of heavenly power that would reorder the nature of power – a power that was not our power over people but God’s power with people. And we see that Jesus is setting the stage here for the apostles to embrace a mindset of loving service as he himself had done. Jesus was answering their request to him to increase their faith. He was teaching them that having the kind of faith that released the power of the Kingdom of God did not mean that they possessed that power within themselves. They would become endued with God’s power at his will and timing as they embraced his servant nature mindset, and as they heard and obeyed his word in any given situation. The world did not know about this and still doesn’t and this has always been on offer to the Church and waiting to be fully embraced in these days of such neediness and destitution of the human soul.

God does not supernaturally empower people who lord themselves over other people or coerce them to do their own bidding. Our faith is the assurance that God is at work in the world of the unseen, and we see God’s power in action as we become partakers of his Divine servant nature. Jesus diligently taught them this a number of times.
Matthew 20:25 Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The Bible tells us in Philippians how Jesus lived within this faith and power when he writes ‘Have this mind(set) among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be clutched onto, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, (Philippians 2:5)

We can know God’s presence with us in many ways, in worship or prayer or meditation in his word, but in our serving that is born out of God’s love and faith and not born out of sheer duty or just to be impressive we can touch the empowering presence of God.

Jesus graphically turned the tables on his apostles’ cultural perspective of masters and servants and status and self-importance when he expressed not only his servant nature but his devoted love to the apostles at the Last Supper.

John 13:3-9 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you will have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (Peter went into overkill as usual)

When he said to Peter ‘you will have no share with me’ he was saying that Peter could only share the Divine empowering and authority as he let the grace of the serving nature of Jesus flow through him to others.
And Jesus has more to say to those who have valued that ‘share with him’ mindset.
Jesus is waiting to come as the bridegroom to his own wedding feast and he wants to demonstrate his love and care and appreciation to all the faithful servants who are waiting for him. And he desires to lavish his warmest hospitality upon
his close and cherished guests and attendants. He says,
Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning and be like people who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. (Luke 12:35)

This servant mindset is always able to be conscious of considering two things at once. The first part is about us and what we are doing and the second part is about what God is doing.

The first part about us is being conscious that we are doing the best we can and accepting that our service will not be perfect but our heart of willingness to help and bless can be as perfectly selfless as we can manage. It is also about dealing with our human expectations of being appreciated or even thanked or wanting to feel affirmed. We can manage that mostly by focussing on the fact that we are doing this as unto the Lord and not only for people. Jesus said ‘when you do this you are doing it for me’ (Matthew 25:40)

That brings us to the second part about being conscious of what God is doing.
God sees what we do as an act of love to himself and as an act of faith in him and now we see the answer to the request that the apostles had for Jesus about increasing their faith.
The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit at these times that God is working through our faith in him to bring about his supernatural outcome of blessing upon the ones we are serving. We leave that result in God’s hands and in his timing. But the awareness of his love and closeness to us at these times brings an instant spiritual blessing to us. And it is in this atmosphere of his loving attendance to us where God assures us of his creative reordering of all things in that place in our world to come into alignment with his will.
Thank you lord that you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD – forever Amen..

Paul O’Sullivan – spiritcode.podbean.com – email - pauloss@icloud.com

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GOSPEL PARABLES 13 THE GOOD SHEPHERD AND DOORKEEPERS
We are continuing in the Parables today with the narrative of the shepherd and the sheep and we previously discussed the story of the shepherd who goes out to find the lost sheep and bring it back to the sheepfold. All the Gospel parables come from Matthew and Mark and Luke, however John does record this one and only parable of the Good shepherd which is not found in any of the other Gospels. In this parable Jesus tells us that as the Good shepherd he is the only door to the sheepfold.

John 10:1-5 “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the door, must surely be a thief and a robber!

Jesus had said that he was ‘sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 15:24). And in the first verse in this parable, he is describing the tragic story of how the sheep flock of the house of Israel had been taken into slavery and captivity many times by alien nations like Egypt and Babylon and Assyria, who climbed over or broke down the wall of the sheepfold and robbed and destroyed God’s flock. Jesus continues,

But the one who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep, and the doorkeeper opens the door to him, and the sheep recognize the shepherd’s voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.

Jesus is talking here to a crowd of Jewish people, some of whom did hear his voice and believe while many others rejected his voice and chose to listen to the voice of legalism and tradition or political power instead of the words of life. But the people were unsure where Jesus was taking this story and they began to express their confusion, so Jesus had to take this story to its fulfillment and reveal himself to them as the Good Shepherd, not only of the house of Israel but of the whole earth. Reading on.

Vs.6-14 Those who heard Jesus use this illustration didn’t understand what he meant, so he explained it to them: “I tell you the truth, I am the door of the sheep(fold) – for the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers. But the true sheep did not listen to them. Yes, I am the door. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. The thief’s purpose is to rob and to kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

In the first part of the parable the door is described as the door ‘to’ the sheep (eis) that the doorkeeper opens for the one true Shepherd, who is Jesus. But we have now just seen in the second part of the parable that Jesus describes himself as the door ‘of/for’ the sheep. Jesus has become our door to the Kingdom of God where we experience life in the family of God with him and the Father and the Holy Spirit and one another - Those who come in through me will be saved.
Jesus continues.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep. A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. The hired hand runs away because he’s working only for the money and doesn’t really care about the sheep. “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.
Jesus then proclaims the awesome prophetic purpose of this parable about the rest of humanity becoming his sheep.
I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd -Israel will come back in.
There is one very important character mentioned in the beginning of this story that we must be careful not to overlook - the doorkeeper. And there are some important doorkeepers in the Bible that need to be known and understood. A doorkeeper is one who gives Jesus access to the sheep as the Good Shepherd who is the door for the sheep into the Kingdom of God. There was a doorkeeper for Jesus from before the very beginning of time and the creation of the earth. And there have been doorkeepers as the door for Jesus right up to his death and resurrection and there have been doorkeepers right up to this present time. I want to list what I believe are seven doorkeepers that give access to the door of our Shepherd Jesus.

The first doorkeeper was Father God who committed his Son to us before the foundation of the world and sent him into the earth for humanity. (Ephesians 1:3-4)
The prophets were doorkeepers anointed by the Holy Spirit to open the ears of God’s people to the Messiah Jesus. And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27).
Mary as the human mother of Jesus was the doorkeeper who carried him in her womb for humanity through the work of the Holy Spirit. (Isaiah 7:14)
John the Baptist as the most anointed of all the prophets was the doorkeeper sent to prepare the way of the Lord and pronounce Jesus as ‘The Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world’ where the Holy Spirit appeared as a dove upon Jesus at his baptism. (John 1:6-9,29)
The Holy Spirit was the doorkeeper always within Jesus, who took him into the wilderness to be tempted after his baptism and then accompanied Jesus on the earth throughout his ministry. He was the doorkeeper that opened the eyes and ears of those who beheld Jesus as the Messiah then heard him speak and saw him die and witnessed his resurrection and his ascension into Heaven. (John 6:63)
The Holy spirit who fell upon all of humanity at Pentecost (Acts 2:17) was the doorkeeper for every person that entered the world (John1:9) to reveal Jesus as the shepherd who lives for his sheep and who goes out looking for any lost sheep to carry them home. ‘For you were like sheep going astray but have now returned to the Shepherd and keeper of your souls.’ (1Peter 2:25).

The final doorkeepers are all those who carry the life of Jesus within them and are willing to lay down their souls for the life of Jesus to be seen in them, and the empowerment for us to do that is the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples before he returned to the Father in Heaven, how the Holy Spirit would operate in them to let their lives on earth bear witness to the fact that he was alive and active within them in the earth.
He said The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26).
He also said when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth… He will testify of Me (martyre??) and you also will bear witness (martyre??). (John15.26). We saw in the parable we just read that ‘the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.’
There are two ways that the Holy Spirit in our lives acts as a doorkeeper Jesus. The first way is for us to keep the door open for people in our lives to find faith in Jesus. We can be consciously aware by our faith and our prayer that we can release the power of the Holy Spirit through our simple obedience to what he directs us to do and to say.
Paul spoke about the doorkeeper ministry of the Holy Spirit in and through his own life.
He prayed for a door of utterance to be given to him that he might declare the mystery of Christ (Colossians 4:2). He did not put confidence in his own natural ability to open doors to release the supernatural power of God for peoples’ lives. His own testimony of his ministry was For we also are (humanly) weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God toward you. The Holy Spirit does things behind the scenes. Jesus spoke to his disciples about bearing witness to him and that now applies to us who believe in Jesus, and this means that the life we live is evidence that God lives through us and that we carry the reality of the life of God within us, not just concepts or opinions about God.

The second way that the doorkeeper work of the Holy Spirit occurs is the hidden way he sovereignly works in every person’s heart in his unceasing desire to turn their hearts towards faith in God’s goodness and love. Jesus explained it this way ‘And when the Helper has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment’. (John 16:8). He reveals the darkness in every human heart and the corruption that is in the world, and he reveals what is upright and in alignment with God’s will in every human heart. The Holy Spirit becomes the light of judgement that divides between the light and darkness and he unveils the reward for what is good and the sentence upon what is evil.
It is good to be aware that the Holy Spirit is the unceasing inner tugging upon the heart of every person on the planet regardless of their religious or cultural background. The soul of mankind opposes and resists this tugging on our conscience concerning God’s truth about who we are and who he is. This is because of our self-determined mindset of independence – our own self-serving idea of what is right and wrong, and good and evil. The Holy Spirit had been the doorkeeper piercing the mind and heart of the apostle Paul to bring him to this encounter with Jesus where he entered through Jesus the door into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Our life of faith is our conscious awareness that the Holy Spirit is working in both of these ways in our own circumstances, and we can live in constant hope and expectation of seeing people being drawn to the Kingdom of God and entering through the door into eternal life.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 12 THE ONE LOST SHEEP
This story is about God’s determination to leave ninety-nine sheep to go and find the one sheep that has gone astray and become lost, and to bring it home. The parable is found in both Matthew and in Luke and while the story of the shepherd and the sheep are the same there is a different emphasis on the nature of the lost sheep in each account.
In Matthew the lost sheep is a little child who has gone astray and in Luke it is a sinner who has become lost.
Matthew 18:10 Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.
Matthew 18:11 What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

Luke 15:1 Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.” So He spoke this parable to them, saying:

Luke 15:4 What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.

These two stories show us the unlimited scope of the ministry of Jesus in in his determination to search out and find every soul that has taken a wrong path for whatever reason and to carry them back on his shoulders to safety. It is not only the little children going astray who may be deprived to one degree or another of the foundational wisdom and nurture they need in their lives. It is the grown-up adult going astray who has made up his or her own mind about what they choose in serving their own desires, good or bad.

The one overarching principle of this determination of our good shepherd is that God also allows us to choose our own determined way even though we get lost. God has us set on his trajectory for our life and we veer off. And Jesus is determined to find us even if we are hiding from him, just as God found Adam who was determined to hide from him after he had sinned.
The parable says that Jesus comes to seek and to save that which was lost. (Matthew 18:14).

He said in that parable it is not the will (Thelema) of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. The word perish is appolymai - to ruin, destroy, waste a life. The word used for ‘will’ in that verse is Thelema which means a ‘determined intention of the will’
Another word used for ‘will’ in the Bible is boloumai which means more of a heartfelt longing. The Bible tells us that God’s will touches both of these meanings because Peter writes about this heartfelt longing of the will of God in the same context of bringing peoples’ hearts back to his love. He writes ‘God is longsuffering toward us, not willing (boloumai – his heartfelt desire) that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2Peter 3:9)

When Jesus puts that lost sheep on his shoulders to bring him back he is putting humanity on his shoulders to bring them back to the Father. God is confident in the power of his own determined love to have this to happen. That can overcome any and every dark and selfish thing that would try to obstruct God from accomplishing his good will for his beloved mankind. That is the overarching principle of God’s determined good will for us.

God’s determined will is infinitely greater than our will.
But how can God eliminate the obstacles of darkness that beguile us and lead us astray?

The first obstacle of darkness was Satan, the serpent, Lucifer, the devil because of his own deception and pride in the beginning. He was one of the highest created spiritual beings that beheld the face of God. And as a lesser spiritual being than God he was of necessity flawed and imperfect, and he sank to the depth of his flawed spiritual nature in his deception and pride. He then set about to destroy the good will design of God for his beloved humanity which Satan knew was also a lesser being than God, and even made a little lower than his own angelic self. He is allowed by God to exercise his own determined evil will upon mankind and tempt them to fall.
The second obstacle is the potential inner darkness of every human soul, because this vulnerability of humanity’s unformed character and desire for self-advantage and self-protection allowed mankind to fall.

James explains that second obstacle of our self serving humanity this way. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death (mindset of separation from God). (James1:14).

God overcame the first obstacle of darkness by sending Jesus because Satan could not overcome the sinless nature of Jesus. But God still allowed Satan to tempt him. And it is through the overcoming power of Jesus that we are able to overcome darkness because Jesus has given us his life to live, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In another startling test case for humanity in the Old Testament God allowed Satan to tempt a man called Job and greatly afflict him. Satan asked God for permission to do the afflicting because he said that Job was only being righteous before God because he was so materially blessed. Satan was allowed to strip Job of his wealth and health and family – the lot. The Bible says Job was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. Job was deemed to be the ‘greatest man in all the East’ having many children and great wealth and wisdom and influence. But Job aimed higher than his own self advantage or self-protection. He said ‘though he slay me I will yet serve him’. Job overcame the built in bias of hostility that the carnal human soul has toward God and he trusted in God’s wisdom and love and determined will to save him in the end, and by ‘in the end’ I mean Job’s statement during his ordeal when he said I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25)

The Bible says about Job. for the LORD had accepted Job. And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before and the Bible also says The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; (Job 42).
Job let go of something of himself to God that he could have clung on to. He could have become stuck in resentment as a victim of injustice. He could have listened to his wife who said, ‘curse God and die’.
Job sacrificially let go of many things in his adversity into the vault of God’s love and determined good will for him. Fsith came alive in him and he believed and received God’s blessing. His surrendered faith in God’s love and goodness and his letting go of his own determined will for God’s determined good will released an abundance of blessing even for his mean spirited friends because Job prayed for them. We can pray like that.

Another Old Testament man, Abraham, learned that faith was letting God’s will override his own determined will in times of adversity. He sacrificially let go of his only son Isaac and obediently offered him as a sacrifice back to God, trusting that God had a perfect solution to complete his perfect will in the earth through him. Abraham’s faith not only received his son back but received through Isaac the nation of Israel and ultimately the whole of humanity.

The Father is the model of sacrificial letting go in letting his Son Jesus go for us and receiving him back in glory, and bringing humanity with him.
Jesus is the model of sacrificially letting go of his own human self-life in adversity in order for his Divine life to come alive in us.
How do we let go in adversity? When adversity blocks us from getting what we want. That adversity seems to oppose what is best for us. An impetuous reaction to that adversity mentally and emotionally dispels our peace and we become conscious of confusion or disorder.
Suppose that we make a simple error of judgement and go too quickly through a stop sign because time is acting against us (consequences). Time is not the adversary nor is the stop sign– our impatience is. Consciously letting go of that impatience and trusting that God is always reordering all things according to his good will, then allows God to flood in with his peace. That letting go has now become an act of faith in God and we will see God’s perfect result supernaturally manifested in our life. Through faith and patience we inherit the promise (Hebrews 6:12)

There are many ways in which we can learn to let go of our own unconscious resistance to what God may have in mind in achieving his will instead of us clinging onto how we prefer to manage things. Our resistance may be our own fear and anxiety and because we expect something bad to happen, we allow fear and doubt to freeze us into inactivity. That is letting go of hope instead of letting go of fear. The Bible says that we have this hope as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, (Hebrews 6:19)
That means that in that frozen moment of fear we can anchor our soul by remembering that God is present with us and actively reordering all things together for our good in the world of the unseen, behind the veil. We cling to that anchor and find the freedom and courage in adversity to act with hope and expectation of God’s determined good will to come to pass.
As the parable says it is not the will (Thelema) of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish - to ruin, destroy, or waste our life. Because of our faith in God’s determined good will for our lives we can receive from God his best for us in this life and in the next. Glory to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to his power that works in us. Amen.
Paul O’Sullivan spiritcode.podbean.com

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GOSPEL PARABLES 11 THREE LOAVES AT THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

We are continuing in the three stories of the three loaves of bread that reveal what is hidden in these stories about the work of the three Person of the Trinity in our lives, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The background of this parable is that Jesus has just taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer – the Our Father, urging them to confidently reach out to our Heavenly Father in their times of need.

Luke 11:5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me… The word ‘bother’ in Greek is parecho –which means to reach out confidently – and possibly pushing the envelope) the door is now shut and my children are asleep.

But the man, confident of his friend’s loyalty keeps on entreating him, and that tugs on his friend’s heart. So Jesus says that even though the door is shut, the reaching out is rewarded and the man opens the door and gives his friend as much bread as he wants, not just because of the friendship but because of his friend’s presumptive confidence and trust in him and in his goodness of heart. Jesus is saying here that a confident entreaty draws a helpful response which is different to a demand which creates a distance.
Jesus continues ‘so I say to you ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
Jesus then re-emphasises big-heartedness the Father in the Lord’s Prayer and says
If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or a scorpion instead of an egg? If you then, being human, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:9-11)

In this story we see that Jesus is the friend in the middle of the three friends. We are the friend in need of bread in the first place and we go to our friend Jesus, and he goes to his friend the Father who is the friend that has all the bread, and who always provides above and beyond our daily bread. This story also contains a prophetic message for the end times because the request is made at the midnight hour - prophetic of the end times when great darkness will cover the earth – and how God’s desire is for people to receive the Holy Spirit in that time. Jesus says to us ‘your Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask’ – those who keep on asking, keep on seeking and knocking on the door

The end time message of the midnight hour throughout the Bible from Exodus to revelation includes three things.
a) God’s judgement upon the words of darkness,
b) People being set free from the chains of spiritual bondage in their lives,
c) The time for Jesus to receive his bride, the Church. The last thing that God did in his work of creation was to present Eve as a bride to Adam created from Adam’s side. The last thing that God will do in his work of redemption will be to present his Church to Jesus as his bride. She is brought forth from the life of Jesus – from his side that was pierced on the cross. We will look at each of the midnight hour prophetic messages.

a) Judgement upon darkness. It was at the midnight hour that God delivered Israel out of Egypt and pronounced judgement upon Pharoah and the false gods of Egypt.
Exodus 12:29 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.
Midnight hour judgement will expose the corruption that is in the world at the end times and many false idols in peoples’ lives will be destroyed.

b) Freedom from spiritual bondage. Reading from the Book of Acts when Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi for peaching the Gospel. ‘At about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the prison doors were opened, and everyone’s chains fell off.

c) The time for Jesus to receive his bride, the Church. The midnight hour is the prelude to the wedding of Jesus and his bride. This is a time when the church will have been made ready as seen in so many Scriptures, and the Bible tells the story of the time when some of the bridesmaids went to sleep while the bridegroom is being delayed, ‘at midnight a cry was heard Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' (Matthew 25:6). The wise bridesmaids had oil in their lamps and went out to meet him, but some of the bridesmaids had no oil in their lamps - speaking of those who have neglected the gift of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The foolish bridesmaids who were without the oil of the Holy Spirit were told to go and get the oil for themselves from the one who had the oil, and when they went to receive, they were told that the door was now shut. It will be a time of desperate seeking and enquiry, and I believe that by the grace of God many will knock, and the door will be opened - many will ask and they will receive the Holy Spirit.

There is also the wedding story of the king who gave a wedding banquet for his son and wanted to fill his house with guests so he sends out messengers to tell people to come to the wedding, but everyone is too busy to attend (Matthew 22:1) The king was greatly disappointed and commanded his servants fill his house with guests. ‘And those servants went out on the crossroads and got together as many as they found, both bad and good, so the room in which the wedding feast was held was filled with guests.
Those highways and byways people would have made their best effort to wear their best wedding garment out of respect and gratitude to the king. But there was one man who had not bothered about a wedding and had no respect or gratitude and when the king saw that man he told his servants to put him out of the wedding feast and into the ‘outer darkness’ of the midnight hour.

The final end time wedding story in the Bible is of Jesus and his bride, and as we have seen, it involves three categories of people, 1) The bride and bridal party attendants, 2) The guests, 3) The ones on the fringe who either only just make it or end up in the outer darkness. If people live in shadows they end up in darkness. It is in that place of outer darkness where some vital decisions will have to be made by many people one day.

In the book of Revelation Ch.11 we are given the same story in a picture of the end time Church as the Temple. The three Temple areas are the inner sanctuary of the Most Holy Place inside the veil, signifying the many Christians who abide in a close relationship with Jesus, and then the inner court outside the veil where the priests ministered at the altar of incense, signifying the many Christians who faithfully serve and worship the Lord, and then there’s the outer court for the Nations – (ethnos), which is a mixed multitude of people. The apostle John is told to measure (metron) both the number of people in each of the three temple areas and the spiritual commitment of the people in those three areas. Note – sanctuary not only means holy place – it’s a place of safety.
‘A reed as a measuring rod was then given to me, shaped like a staff, and I was told ‘Rise up and measure the sanctuary (Most Holy Place) of God and the altar of incense, and number those who worship there. But leave out measuring the outer court of the temple of God; for it is given over to the Nations, and they will trample the holy city underfoot for 42 months (three and a half years)’.

That outer court is the outer darkness of the midnight hour and the people there are not measured at that particular time of the three and a half years mentioned in Revelation, because before the Lord arrives the people in that place will go through the time of great tribulation. As the prophet Joel said ‘Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision (h?ârûs? – agitation and threshing and decision) for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision (Joel 3:14). It is in that time and place that people will have to decide whether they cry out to God and ask and receive the Holy Spirit or to knock and have the door opened for them, just as Jesus described in the original parable. The Father in heaven will answer those midnight hour entreaties and give the Holy Spirit to those who ask and seek and knock, as Paul writes all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10)

We do not know the times and the seasons of God but there will be times when the darkness will be at its greatest as God gives the world its warnings, and as he gives his Church his message of hope for setting people free. We are certainly in a dark time of history and God is bringing many things of the world into the light for them to be seen and judged for what they are. He is also encouraging his church to become pure of heart and prepared as a bride for his Son. We can be that friend in the parable of the three loaves that speak of the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We go to our friend Jesus on behalf of the people that we love and have some influence with, so that the Father will give them the revelation of the person of the Holy Spirit to draw close to him and reach out for him. Thank you Jesus for showing us the Father and thank you Father for being such a big-hearted Father who always provides above and beyond our daily bread – for ourselves and for those for whom we pray. Amen

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GOSPEL PARABLES 10 LEAVEN IN THE KINGDOM
We are continuing in the parables of the three loaves of bread and we saw recently that there were three stories that contain the phrase three loaves of bread. The Three loaves of bread symbolise the three Persons of the Trinity, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. We also found that these stories revealed the nature of each of the Persons of the Trinity and how each one works within our spirit.
We've looked at the story of Abraham and the three loaves of bread and the judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and we've also looked at the story of a woman being given eagles wings by God to escape the attack of Satan in the Book of Revelation.
Today I'm again looking more fully at the parable of the woman hiding leaven in the bread, from Matthew chapter 13.33 – the Kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal (or three loaves of bread) till it was all leavened. Jesus uses the word egkrypto for hid instead of krypto - the only time egkrypto is ever used in the Bible - compelling us again to ask God what Jesus encrypted for us in the word leaven in this parable.
The word leaven in the scriptures is given the meaning of corruption and sinfulness and hypocrisy, and as before we are letting Scripture interpret Scripture. Jesus said beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed nor hidden that will not be known. (Luke12). Jesus is saying that all the corruption and hypocrisy that seeks to stay hidden will in due course be exposed and judged, and we're seeing that happening before our own eyes in these days.
Practically, and in a neutral sense, leaven works through fermentation, expanding and transforming bread, and once fermentation begins, it continues until ready for baking.

So in letting Scripture interpret Scripture we go back to the first mention of leaven in Genesis and follow that word. We find it in Genesis 19 in the story of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, which is part of the earlier story of Abraham and the three loaves of bread that Sarah cooked for the three messengers that Abraham called ‘My Lord’ – Adonai. We saw how Abraham prayed to the Father to spare his cousin Lot’s family from judgement in Sodom, while the two other messengers as angels went down to Sodom. Lot’s family is spared the judgement of the city, and what we find in that story is that Lot prepares a meal of unleavened bread for the two visiting angels. In his urgent desire to escape and receive the supernatural deliverance of God Lot had no time to start doing any bread leavening process or baking – he wanted out of there!

And this sets the pattern for the next mention of unleavened bread which is in Exodus when Israel escapes from Pharaoh in Egypt. Moses told the Israelites to leave in haste because there was judgement coming upon all in Egypt and all Egypt’s first born were to be killed, but the Angel of death would pass over Israel because they had sprinkled the blood of a lamb upon the doorposts of each house, so they packed all their belongings and their food and they had no time to wait for bread to be leavened and baked.(Exodus 12:15).
So from then on, Israel were to celebrate the feast of Passover each year with unleavened bread to remind them of the significance and urgency of that miraculous deliverance from the sin and judgement in Egypt. And what we then find everywhere in the Old Testament sacrifices is that God required that Israel only use unleavened bread in their sacrificial offerings.

Paul brings the same message of the Passover Feast into the New Testament when he admonishes the Corinthian church for the immorality that they had let into the church, and he described that behaviour as leaven. He says ‘For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed, let us therefore celebrate the communion feast not with the old leaven of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Paul is saying the unleavened bread at communion is a reminder of Christ's sinless sacrifice, and he tells the church to examine their hearts at Communion, and to remember his mercy and forgiveness and to remember God's miraculous work of salvation. Many Christians use unleavened bread at communion to symbolise that.
Leaven in the Old and New Testament does not seem to have gained a good reputation.

So what does Jesus mean when he says that the Kingdom of God is like a woman (the Church) hiding leaven in three loaves of bread until the loaves are fully leavened?
Why would Jesus say that sinfulness must grow to its fullest extent in the Kingdom of God? He’s not saying the world, he’s saying the Kingdom of God!
And how would this describe the expression of the Persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit working through the Church upon the spirit of Mankind?
I had not seen or heard a satisfactory answer to this puzzle of leaven filling the Kingdom. Is there something good that reflects something of the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit working upon the spirit of mankind?
Is there something the Bible has to say about this?

Yes there is – Praise God – hiding in Leviticus 23:15. And in this Scripture it says that at the feast of Pentecost the loaves will be baked with leaven as a holy offering to the Lord, and the leaven here speaks of The Holy Spirit. Let me explain.
This is a departure from all the Old Testament sacrifices that had required that only unleavened bread was to be used with sacrificial offerings. But the significance of celebrating the harvest Festival of Pentecost gives special meaning to the leaven being used in the loaves.

In this Scripture Israel is told that they had to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost as a harvest Festival every year. In Israel the feast is called Shavuot, meaning ‘weeks’, referring to Pentecost as the feast that comes seven weeks and one day after the Feast of Passover – fifty days – and Pente is the Greek word for fifty.
The Sunday that followed directly after the Passover Sabbath is our Resurrection Sunday, and Israel they were to wave the first sheaf of grain of the harvest as a grain offering to the Lord -and that offering was called the first fruits of the harvest. That is a remarkable prophetic statement about Jesus who as the first man to rise from the dead is called the first fruits of the Resurrection in the Bible (1 Corinthians15:51; 1 John 3:2). The Hebrew word for first fruits is bikkurim – which means ‘the promise to come’ because the harvest fully comes 50 days later on the day of Pentecost. Jesus told his disciples to wait for the ‘promise of the Father’ (bikkurim – the promise to come) saying ‘John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 1:8).
On that day of Pentecost (Shavuot) Israel had to offer two loaves of bread, and those two loaves were to be baked with leaven. (Note – two loaves of bread – not three! – hold that thought)

The two loaves that were leavened in the Feasts of Pentecost every year have now become three loaves of bread, and the reason for having to wait for the two loaves to become three loaves is that right up until Jesus had died on the cross and risen from the dead and ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit, there were only two Persons (two loaves) operating in the earth upon the spirit of all of humanity - Jesus and the Father. The Holy Spirit had operated through prophets and kings and priests but was not being expressed into and through all of humanity until the Day of Pentecost.
On Pentecost Sunday in the book of Acts the Holy Spirit fell upon all flesh - all humanity, allowing the expression of the three Persons of the Trinity upon the spirit of all Mankind. Peter said in the Book of Acts ‘I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh’. (Acts 2.7). This is a startling example of God’s awesome attention to detail!
And in the parable that Jesus taught about the woman hiding the leaven in the bread, Jesus said that the leaven would grow to its full extent in the Kingdom of God – the leaven of the Holy Spirit – not the leaven of sin and corruption!

Shavuot (Pentecost) was also a time for Israel to recommit to their covenant with God and to celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, which amazingly also fell fifty days after the first Passover of Israel in Egypt. The Law once written on tablets of clay is now written upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit – a New Covenant – part of the Third loaf blessing of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the leaven that is going to fully expand the Kingdom of God for the end time expression of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Church and to the world before the Lord returns. The new leaven of the Holy Spirit will fill the Church in greater measure than ever before, and we will see him expressed in greater measure than ever before - into the world, and not remaining hidden. He is the one who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts – he is the one who leads us into all truth – he is the one who takes what Jesus says and interprets it to us in an amazingly personal and individual way for our instruction and guidance. The Bible says that on the day of Pentecost everybody heard the good things of God being spoken to them in their own language. The Holy Spirit is going to be speaking to people in the way that they understand him no matter what their cultural or religious background. The Bible says for us to ‘Be being filled’ as a continuous mindset and process of faith, and as we continue to keep on being filled, we can expect his grace for the flow of the Holy Spirit in us to be imparted to those in our world. Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 9 A WOMAN GIVEN EAGLES WINGS
Continuing in the Parables of the three loaves of bread, we saw that there were three stories that contain the phrase ‘Three loaves of bread’, and last week we did the story of Abraham and the judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Today I’m looking more fully at the original three loaves parable of Jesus in Matthew 13:33 ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.’ There is more to this short parable than I first thought or even imagined.

The word for ‘hid’ in that verse is egkrypto – encrypted and not the usual word– krypto. What is primarily hidden in the three loaves is the message of the three Persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s people. Jesus uses this word egkrypto which is the only time this word is ever used in the Bible and that compels us to diligently look at each word and ask God what Jesus encrypted for us to decrypt and understand. The only code that serves the truth of Scripture when following a particular word or concept through the Bible is that of letting Scripture interpret Scripture by looking at the first mention of that word or concept in the Bible and tracking it from Genesis to Revelation.

We will start by asking who this Woman is that hides the leaven until the final stage of Kingdom growth is reached, and the first prophetic word about a Woman throughout the Bible is found in Genesis 3:15, where God judges Satan for tempting Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve’s judgement is that Adam faces hardship in tilling the ground, while Eve endures pain in childbirth. However, when God judges the serpent he introduces the Woman as a type of the Church because God says to Satan ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’ This prophecy is the archetype of spiritual warfare between the Church and Satan throughout the Scriptures.
The offspring of the Woman refers to Jesus, whose heels suffered piercing and bruising on the cross. The Church is also the Woman’s offspring through Jesus and embodies his life and continues his mission, and the Church ultimately crushes the serpent's head in the final victory of light over darkness. The Father’s prophecy in Genesis signifies that the Church triumphs in spiritual warfare through being united with Jesus in his victory.

Paul affirms this spiritual victory in Romans 16:20, emphasizing that ‘the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly’ (tachos). Tachos means "a short space of time," and it indicates a future event that will occur for a short space of time, rather than occurring in a short space of time soon after Paul wrote it, because it is yet to occur. A word search reveals that tachos aligns with the British meaning of the word "momentarily," which means ‘for a short space of time’, while in American English, it means "soon or in a short space of time." The key point is the brief duration of Satan's defeat rather than its immediacy and it reflects a future distinct measure of time. (We will be at LA airport momentarily – why stay at LA airport for a short space of time?)

We will continue to follow this intriguing hiddenness theme that runs throughout the story of the Church. The Church of Jesus is hidden in Jesus, and just as the Woman hid the leaven in the three loaves, the Church that is hidden in Jesus remains concealed to the world. It is not observed under the banner of any denomination or doctrine but exists within and beyond what may or may not even resemble traditional or institutional church. Church has always been truly realised in gatherings of God’s people who express the unity of the Spirit in bonds of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3), and as a people not walking in the power or appearance of worldly influence but living by faith and love in the power of Christ and in intimate relationship with him and overcoming all darkness in the earth through him. Paul speaks of the Church as the bride of Christ and he says that this conceals a great mystery. Yet it reveals the truth of a loving unity of Spirit in people whose outward lives express the hidden life of Christ within. (Ephesians 5:25-27, 32)

The Church has been given a New Testament strategy for spiritual warfare, which means that we overcome darkness from our position of authority seated with Christ in the highest place - above the Heavens. This is unlike the Old Testament spiritual warfare that Daniel was engaged in when he prayed for understanding of what would happen in the End Times (Daniel 10).
Daniel prayed from the earth into the heavens while angels fought above him and he had to wait three weeks for the angel Gabriel to answer his prayer because Gabriel was battling the prince powers of darkness over Persia. Though we experience the buffeting of spiritual struggles on earth, the enemy is under our feet and our True spiritual warfare is in trusting God to fight our battles and our resting in His authority.

Gabriel told Daniel that he needed help from the Archangel Michael to overcome the prince powers of darkness in the Heavens. Daniel's prayer experience is directly reflected in a vision of the last days that we see in Revelation Ch.12 where a similar battle occurs between Michael and Satan who is called the dragon in Revelation. The dragon realizes ‘he has but a short time’ (Revelation 12:12), confirming Paul’s end time prophecy when he said that God would crush Satan under our feet in a short space of time (tachos).
Paul also said in Romans 9 that The Lord will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness and make a short work upon the earth (syntemno – to execute or finish it in a short space of time).
There is an interesting short space of time mentioned twice in Revelation 12 as "a time, times, and half a time" and "one thousand two hundred and sixty days," and as forty-two months in Chapters 11 and 13. It refers to a period of three and a half years. At the beginning of this space of time Satan, depicted as the dragon, pursues the Woman (The Church - Revelation 12:13), and in the next verse the Woman is given "wings of a great eagle" to escape into a solitary place (eremos), receiving protection and refuge by God for this period of time.
This is an amazing reiteration of how Pharaoh pursued Israel at the Red Sea when God says to Israel ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself (Exodus 19:4). Pharoah is a type of Satan in Genesis and a type of the dragon in Revelation 12 - where it says that the dragon even sends a flood to drown the woman but the earth helps the Woman, just as the earth helped Israel in dividing the Red Sea for them to escape. Only Scripture can interpret and validate Scripture throughout the Bible.

Whatever that final battle between the Woman and Satan that began in Genesis and ends in Revelation will look like, and however the protection of God for the Woman the Church in that short space of time plays out, remains in the realm of speculation as far as I’m concerned. But it denotes a type of supernatural protection and provision. We just read that the Woman is given two wings of a great eagle, which speaks about being in some way spiritually lifted above the peril of those days, which could mean in a spiritual sense of simply being uplifted in faith, or it could mean miraculously shielded from peril in the earth.

I think Psalm 91 is the archetype of this supernatural protection that God has always given his people in times of battle against his enemies, as David says. ‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and see the judgement of the wicked because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you. (Psalm 91:1-10)
The battle in the Heavens between Michael and the dragon in Revelation Ch. 12 takes place only at the very end when the dragon is cast down to the earth. However, I believe that we are living in times when Satan is currently losing altitude and making himself felt and even perhaps being perceived in more bold and strange supernatural manifestations in the earth. The Bible says that ‘Satan can appear as an angel of light’ (2Corinthian 11) and it also says that in the last days ‘The coming of the lawless one (the dragon) is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception. (2Thessalonians 3:8-10)
So let us remember that no matter how darkness and deception want to show off and confuse and destabilise peoples’ souls, we are seated in the highest place with Christ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:21)

What we do know is that the enmity between the Woman and the Prince of Darkness was prophesied in Genesis and reinforced in Romans and other epistles and finally in Revelation. And we know that the message is about the supernatural victories of the Kingdom of God over the kingdom of darkness, and we know that the Woman plays a great part in that victory in the end times. In the meantime, we can continue to live above and not under the powers of darkness without fear in our daily lives. This is how we are to see ourselves today as the Church. Paul teaches us concerning Jesus that God ‘has put all things under His feet and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22).
Thank you Lord that though we may live in the most enormous times of uncertainty that the world has know we can at the same time experience the greatest times of certainty that we have known because you dwell in the highest place with all things under your feet, and you are by our side because you have placed us by your side in that heavenly place. Amen

Paul O’Sullivan 22 Sept 2024 – Northern Beaches Christian Centre NSW Australia.

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PARABLES 8 Leaven in three loaves

This is the shortest parable of Jesus in the Bible and it occurs in Matthew Ch.13 and in Luke Ch.13. Jesus taught this after he had taught the parables of the mustard seed and the growing seed. Reading now from Matthew.

Matthew 13:33 Another parable He spoke to them: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was fully (holos) leavened.’

Three measures of meal means three portions of flour made into three loaves of breadcake. The leaven is ‘hidden’ and the Greek word for hidden that Jesus uses here is (egkrypto – encrypted) and this word is not found anywhere else in the Bible. The usual word that is used for hidden in all other Scriptures is ‘krypto’. The word Krypto means something hidden but egkrypto means not only hidden but encrypted with a code, and there is a big difference between the two words.

Encryption is a two-way process because encrypted information has to be decrypted by someone who has the appropriate code or key. You can find documents hidden in a room if you look hard enough but if they are in a fixed safe in the room you need to know the combination or the code for the safe.

The phrase ‘three loaves of bread’ occurs in three stories in the Bible and in each story that phrase hides truth concerning the Trinity of the three Persons of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But there is also an encoded message of the ‘End Times’ beyond what is hidden in each story of the ‘three loaves of bread’ because Jesus was speaking in that parable of the loaves being fully leavened - speaking of the work of the Kingdom of God until it is being expressedfully (holos) in the earth in the last days before Jesus returns.

This parable of the leaven in three loaves of bread is followed in the Gospels by another ‘End Times’ ‘three loaves of bread’ parable in Luke Ch. 11 about the man who comes to his friend at the midnight hour desperately requesting three loaves of bread, and we will look more fully at both those parables in our next episode of the Gospel parables.

But today we will deal with the first ‘three loaves of bread’ story in the Bible in Genesis 18 where three men appear to Abraham to announce to Abraham and Sarah that Sarah will have a son in her old age, in a year’s time. When Abraham sees them, he greets them as ‘My Lord’ – Adonai – which is only ever used to mean Almighty God. That alone hides the fact that Abraham must have been given a revelation of God as being three persons. He didn’t say ‘My Lords’, plural. He then asks Sarah to make three loaves of bread for the three guests. The three loaves of bread was a visible representation of the Trinity of God as was the appearance of the three men. This was a veiled appearance of God as the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in angelic form. That is called a Theophany - and this appearance of a Triune God sets the pattern of the three loaves of bread in the Scriptures as a symbol of the Trinity and it also unveils the three distinct natures of the different Persons of the Trinity.

To this day when Jewish families celebrate the Passover feast, they place three small cake loaves of bread on the table in front of the guests. They then hide the middle cake of bread somewhere in the room and the children have to find it. The feast cannot be completed until the second loaf cake is found. That piece of bread is called the ‘Ransom’ and the child who finds it gets the Ransom reward.

That of course represents Jesus as the second person of the Trinity who is currently hidden from the spiritual eyes of the Jewish people. This is an encrypted message to the modern-day Orthodox Jew, and the key to decrypting this message is in receiving the gift of faith and grace through the Holy Spirit that brings a revelation of Jesus into their hearts.

After the three messengers deliver the message to Abraham about Sarah giving birth to Isaac they set off towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and one of them, whom Abraham calls ‘The Lord’, stays aside and declares to Abraham that he will bring severe judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, but Abraham pleads with him, finally getting him to agree to save the cities if ten righteous men are found there. Meanwhile the other two men have gone down to Sodom and Gomorrah as angels (malak – messengers). Abraham’s plea was a prayer to the Father, the Person of the Trinity who represents judgement and justice. The other two Persons represented mercy and truth, with Jesus being mercy - in saving Lot’s family, and the Holy Spirit being truth – in shining light and truth and exposing the deviant culture in that place.

So the reality of the Trinity was revealed in the three Persons of Father, Son and Holy spirit, but encrypted in that story was also the nature and activity of the three Persons of the Trinity. And what is even more deeply encoded in this story and in the other ‘three loaves’ parables is a prophetic message of what will happen in the last days before the return of Jesus.

We see that message in the story of Abraham and the three messengers at Mamre which finishes with the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the judgement on that wicked culture is spoken about in the Book of Jude 1:7 in the New Testament where Jude speaks of prophesies that liken the judgement upon the wicked culture of Sodom and Gomorrah to the ‘End Times’ dealings of God that will come upon the wickedness abounding in the world before Jesus returns.

The Holy Spirit who shone light and truth into the wickedness of that culture is shining light into our culture today. The Bible foretold that these days would come and that when they did there would arise a polarity between darkness and light in the earth. And that brings us great hope. Isaiah prophesied these things to Israel and was speaking beyond Israel to us as well as followers of Jesus all over the world. Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you (who follow Jesus). For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the people; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and people shall come to your light…

When we see the work of the Father as being the justice and judgement of God, we have to ask ourselves how we relate to that regarding our faith in a loving God. In fact my personal experience is that the judgement of the Father is critical to the final reality of my faith. We can easily relate to Jesus as being the author and finisher of our faith and as being the one who enables us with his grace, and we gladly accept that the Holy Spirit takes what Jesus says to us and reveals that to us and leads us into all truth. However, the judgement of the Father isn’t just about bringing us to account for the consequences of our wrongdoing – his judgement means his capacity to bring his absolute love and wisdom into what he regards as being best for our lives.

The question I ask myself is. ‘Can I trust the judgement of God to decide what is right for my life?’ and ‘Whose judgement should I trust to guide my life and bring the best future for my life to me each day? Should I despise and disdain and complain about disagreeable circumstances that come upon me? Should I question the integrity of God for letting me go through loss and affliction?

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all agree as one about what is right and good for my life. But it is the Father who supernaturally works the things that are good into my life experience. The Father takes all the imperfect things that I do, that have negative or nuisance consequences, and the testing things that others might do to me, and the unavoidable challenging tasks and difficulties, and he supernaturally works them all together for my good. But it is difficult to experience that goodness if I do not know or believe that that is what he is doing. ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God ‘(Romans 8:28)

My faith is not about summonsing a more intense effort to believe that God will give me my judgement of what is good and right for me. Only the judgement of the Father is critical to the reality of my faith, and thanking the Father in all things is the greatest expression of my faith. Moments of thanksgiving to our Father are moments to be cherished no matter what. If God is hidden from us it is only because he wants to be discovered by us. Thank you Lord for drawing us aside to be with you even in the midst of all the other things that are going on round about us and thank you for reminding us that you are unceasingly working your good will into our lives as you have done from the very beginning.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 7 THE GROWING SEED

The parable of the growing seed is only found in the Gospel of Mark, and it comes after the Parable of the Sower who sows seed on four different types of soil – the wayside and the rocky ground and the thorny ground and the good soil. It follows the same Kingdom theme that sets the overall framework of the seed as being the word of God and the soil being our hearts of faith. Today we are reading from the Gospel of Mark.
Mark 4:26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

We see in this story that the farmer or husbandman does his work and sows the seed and then sleeps and rises day and night while the unseen seed silently grows and then emerges into sight. This is how God began his work of creation in the world of the unseen. The Bible says that Jesus, the creative logos Word, spoke creation into being (John 1, Genesis 1). And that same logos Word is what speaks our spiritual growth into being. The Bible says this about us - having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23)
This parable is about the stages of growth of our spiritual life through the life of Jesus within us. It shows the gradual process of our spiritual development and our need of patience and trust in God's timing on our journey of faith as he nurtures us into our fruitful eternal destiny.
In the parable of the growing seed the blade represents the initial stage of growth after the seed germinates or sprouts and begins to emerge as the tender green shoot. This speaks of the early signs of spiritual growth or the beginning of faith, where new hope for a new life of faith lies ahead.
Then comes the ear (Stachys- standing out) – that is the next stage of growth, where the plant begins to differentiate and stand out from the main stem, showing its individual potential in forming within it, the head of grain. This stage is about us learning about our faith and about who we are in Jesus. The ear of the plant is still vulnerable at this stage and needs protection within a covering just as our spiritual growth receives the grace and mercy of God and also flourishes within the protective framework of the teaching of God’s word and fellowship with other believers.

The ear continues to develop and fill out as healthy grain with the potential for full maturity, and with faith and patience it will become more robust before it reaches the final stage of ripening and being ready for harvest. For us this means that our spiritual growth is more about inner transformation than outward appearance, as we accept the sure and steady patient progress of spiritual development and do not become discouraged and lose hope.

Then comes the stage where the fruit of the Spirit which is our spiritual growth becomes more visible and develops into the full grain in the ear. This fruitfulness can now be seen in us as the love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When the disciples asked Jesus to show them the Father he said ‘if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father’. And God is saying to us in this parable that he has placed his life-seed in us so that as that seed grows we may be able to say ‘if you’ve seen me you have seen Jesus’ (John 14:9) Jesus expresses his life in our soul as the expression of our unique God-designed spirit.

The parable said ‘The earth produces by itself’ The earth is the soil of our hearts of faith in which that seed is embedded. The seed of the life of the Spirit of Christ in us contains all the DNA of the essential nature of God as the spiritual fruit of our lives. Jesus is the life in which our life exists, but our soul gives it a unique expression through the work of the Holy Spirit in growing the fruit of the spirit in our lives.
The fruit of the spirit of love grows in and through us as we receive the love of God into our hearts and minds. That is the starting point, and every other expression of fruit is tinged and coloured and flavoured by God’s love that mercifully accepts us and makes us feel we belong and can feel safe and satisfied with life. That love can then touch others.
The fruit of the spirit of joy expresses the cheerfulness and elation of being a victor and not a victim of life’s struggles. The Bible says ‘we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8). (Jesus our team coach in tough Grand Final, injuries galore but glorious win)

The fruit of the spirit of peace is ours when we know that once we have placed everything in his hands our oneness together with him stands guard over our hearts and minds and banishes our anxiety concerning our future.

Longsuffering is our faith in his mercy upon our shortcomings that takes away the fear of judgement and replaces it with grace filled opportunities to be transformed into our true and destined selves - in his likeness. We can learn to withhold judgement upon others also and see God bring about change in their lives.

Kindness comes from the word kindred and expresses the kind of compassion and protective care that we would have for the most defenceless person in our family.

Goodness is not just a display of virtue but is simply the effect of making a person feel better off after having known us than they did before. Jesus said ‘only God is good’. His goodness works itself into us and flows out as us being a blessing to those who know us.

Faithfulness describes God’s devotion to ‘being there’ for us without wavering, even when we waver in our being there for him. Our faithfulness to God and to other people grows within his loyal faithfulness to us.

God’s gentleness to us creates a safe and accepting space for our feelings of vulnerability and is part of the healing of the soul we can offer to someone who has been mistreated in their lives.

Self-control is giving place to God’s control over our lives, spirit, soul and body. It is the highest form of spiritual authority that we can possess in this life. When we give this place to God nothing of darkness can overcome us and no weapon that is formed against us will prosper.

This fruitfulness is a final stage of maturity, where the fruitful grain (kartos - fruit) is ripe and ready for harvest – But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Paul writes about this time of assessing the fruitfulness of our lives at the time of the second coming of the Lord. When the Lord comes, he will bring to light the things now hidden and reveal the motives of the heart. Then each one will receive praise from God.
We will each be affirmed and commended for the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
James also writes about the second coming of the Lord in his story of the farmer who sows the seed and patiently waits for the outpouring of the rain before the harvest.

James 5:7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the latter rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
The farmer is the Father who waits for the fruit of harvest, and we as God’s people are also told to be patient and establish our hearts of faith and to expect the outpourings of the Holy Spirit before the second coming of the Lord. ‘so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, whom heaven must retain until the times of restoration of all things’ (Acts 3:19).

One barrier to allowing that fruitful seed to grow in us is that we can feel that we are too prone to making mistakes and failing short in our dealings with life and our attitudes.
How could such an Almighty Holy God work through such flawed human beings as us?
The Bible shows up that kind of thinking as being a lie.
Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to bring to life the spirit of the lowly, and to bring to life the heart of the contrite ones.
The only way we can truly appreciate and give thanks to our God who is in the highest place, is to know him as the one who loves us in our lowly place and that is in fact the most perfect place. The glory of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus is that he took his human weakness to the cross to bring forth the power of his life in us. The spiritual growth journey is about us being able to carry our own human weaknesses at the same time as we carry the powerful life of Jesus within us. We can now carry our weakness without fear or shame. Amen

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GOSPEL PARABLES 6 THE MUSTARD SEED
This parable comes after the parable of the Sower and the seed in the three Gospels of Matthew Ch.13 and Mark Ch.7 and Luke Ch.13. It follows the same Kingdom theme that sets the overall framework of the seed as being the word of God and the soil being our hearts of faith. Jesus told his disciples that if they did not understand that truth they would not understand any of the parables (Mark 4:13). Today we are reading from the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew 13:31 He told them another parable, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all other shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

The birds in the mustard tree parable symbolize the Gentile Nations coming to find shelter in the kingdom of God, a theme rooted in Old Testament prophecy and fulfilled in the New Testament. There are two Old Testament prophesies in Ezekiel (Ch.17 and Ch.31 about Lebanon and Assyria) and one in Daniel (Ch.10Babylon) that speak of kingdoms as trees growing to a great size so that the migratory birds of the air come and take shelter in the branches, symbolising those birds as foreign nations becoming included in those three kingdoms. The mustard seed parable highlights the inclusive nature of God's kingdom, where all nations and families of the earth are invited to enter in by faith and become part of God's family.

With the framework of the seed as being the word and the soil as being the hearts as our reference point, we see that the lesson in the parable of the mustard seed is that the seed of the word of faith can be of the smallest size and yet it can grow to be a faith of great magnitude.
If all we do is trust Jesus to exercise his faith and grace in interceding to the Father on our behalf, we will see the Father’s goodness and faithfulness come to pass in our lives. That is what it means to cultivate a surrendered faith, and the smallest of seeds grows into the greatest fulfilment.
Trusting Jesus in that way means that we say to Jesus in our need, ‘I can trust in you to speak your word into my heart and intercede for me according to the will of the Father’. We don’t exert our own mental and emotional energy to muster the kind of faith and power that thinks we own and direct the outcome we want as the answer to our prayers. We leave those answers and outcomes under the command of Jesus because he intercedes to the Father for us to bring about the Father’s will for us and the Father manifests that answer openly. ‘He (Jesus) makes intercession for us according to the will of God and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are invited to live according to His purpose.’ (Romans 8:27-28 and 34)

In this way our surrendered faith has the ultimate hope of God’s will coming to pass for us. And this is in contrast to non-surrendered faith which demands its own result and gets confused and somewhat surprised that it doesn’t get what it thought the Bible said it would. But surrendered faith never demands its own results and is always surprised by the astonishing results that God grants to that greater mustard seed faith. Surrendered speaks the word that Jesus gives us to say, like when Jesus on the Mt of olives said if you have faith like a mustard seed you will say to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea (Matthew 17:20).

There are two striking examples of people exercising that kind of surrendered faith in the Gospels that Jesus praises as being ‘great faith’, where both of these people receive a miraculous answer to their request - and both of them are Gentiles and not Jews. This is prophetic of the New Testament gathering of all the Gentile Nations of the world into the mustard seed tree of the Kingdom of God as told in the parable.

One ‘mustard seed great faith’ story is of the Gentile mother who asked Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter, and Jesus refused, saying I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21). He was letting her know he was here to fulfill the mission of his Father to Israel. He even told her that Gentiles were regarded as dogs by the Jews.
The other ‘great faith’ story is about the Centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralysed son and when Jesus makes a decision to go to his home the Centurion says ‘no Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but just say the word and my son will be healed.’
The peculiar similarity between these two stories is that Jesus makes an immediate decision about what he should do, and then changes his mind about it in both cases when each of these people query what he decided in the first place.
The question is – why would Jesus listen to the Gentile mother and the Gentile Centurion, and pause and then change his mind about his decisions?
I’ll need to answer that with more questions.
Was Jesus always waiting to see first what his Father would do in a situation or waiting to hear what his Father had to say into a situation before he acted?
And would the Holy Spirit bear witness to Jesus about what his Father would do or say?
And would Jesus then speak and act accordingly?
The Bible says ‘yes’ to each of those questions.

In the situation with the Gentile mother with the demon possessed daughter, when she hears the remark about the Jew’s calling Gentiles dogs, she says ‘even the dogs are allowed crumbs from the table’. She took a lowly place and accepted that she had no place in claiming anything from God, but something in her heart also trusted totally in Jesus and she surrendered everything to him. Jesus as a Jewish man under the law whose heart was to please his Father had made a just reckoning of this situation and obediently aligned himself to what his mission to Israel was. However, when the woman spoke about dogs getting the crumbs Jesus was faced with having to give her an answer.

And she did not realise or understand that Jesus would also surrender everything he did to what his Father might want to do in the matter. ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner’ (John 5:19). The Bible says that Jesus did change his mind and the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour. The woman’s faith was rewarded not just by her daughter being delivered and set free, but also by the unexpected praise of Jesus for her great faith. The Father wanted that woman’s prayer answered. Is that where ultimate surrendered authority ends up? Did
Jesus surrendered his authority to his Father’s will.

The other ‘great faith’ story is of the Gentile Centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralysed son. Jesus says he will go to his home but the Centurion counters that decision of Jesus and says ‘no Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but just say the word and I know he will be healed.’ because I am also a man under authority having soldiers under me and when I say ‘go’ they go, and to another come and he comes and to another do this and he does it. (Matthew 8:8). The Bible goes on to say that Jesus marvels at this and says that he has not found such great faith even in the children of Israel. Here is another example of ultimate surrendered faith and surrendered authority.

But even though the Centurion understood the principle of authority and believed that Jesus was in charge, he did not know that Jesus did nothing unless he heard his Father speak to him. As the Bible says ‘As I hear, I decide; and My decision is just, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me (John 5:30). Jesus knew that the Father was in command of that situation, and when Jesus heard his Father speak into that situation, even perhaps through the Centurion’s own words, Jesus decided to not walk in his own strength to the Centurion’s home but to allow his Word to do the travelling. This is all we need to know – how to surrender to the authority of Jesus and the authority of Father God in our struggles and prayer burdens – and we can enter into the rest of faith. This is the mustard seed faith that grows into a great tree of hope.

God the Father was always in Jesus doing that work in the world of the unseen, and the Holy Spirit always empowered the word that Jesus spoke. The Holy Spirit communicates God’s words to us in ways that so often seem like natural occurrences, like the Gentile woman’s statement about the dog getting crumbs or the words of the principled Centurion entreating Jesus to save himself a long walk and simply send his Word. This was a work of the Three in One Trinity of God - This was the way The human and Divine work of Jesus took the burden of the peoples’ needs and heard the Father in Heaven and left the manifestation of the outcome in the hands of the Father. This is how God has ordained that we now are to connect with the Three Persons in One God. Their loving care and attendance to the lowly Gentile woman outsider and the principled Gentile Centurion is the same loving attendance they give to our struggles and needs with our mustard seed faith.

We can now see our life experience of faith as being not just about us, but as an extension of the very life of God. The life of Father God is in Jesus and of the life of Jesus in us and we are in them, working together through the power of Holy Spirit and into our world. Our world can be touched by God through a mustard seed of faith that grows into a tree of the Kingdom of God. And we will see many people in our world blessed and healed as they dwell in its branches.

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PARABLE OF THE HUMAN DIVINE SPIRIT BARRIER

Today we are revisiting the last parable that we looked at where Jesus was describing the four types of soil that the Sower sowed the seed into, symbolising the four states of the human heart in receiving and understanding and acting upon God’s word to us. Seed was sown by the wayside, some on stony places, some on thorny ground and some on good soil.

The type of heart soil that spoke to me the most was ‘Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun was up they were scorched. Jesus explained that these hearts receive the Word with joy; yet they have no root in themselves but endure only for a while and because they had no root in themselves, they withered away. This speaks of our human heart needing more resilience or staying power when life gets difficult and our faith gets tested at the root level of who we are.
It speaks to us about not understanding that root level of ourselves that makes us feel anxious about enduring through our feelings of loss or disappointment or difficult life situations and thinking ‘can I really trust God to be with me and for me in this situation?’ The Greek word for ‘endure’ here is eimi which means ‘I am’, and we often don’t understand the depth of our ‘I am’ with God. But God digs into the stony soil of our hearts and enriches it to let us know that his ‘I am’ can cross the seemingly impassable barrier between the human spirit and the Divine Spirit allowing us to be found within the ‘I am’ of Jesus.

I would like to explain that seemingly impassable barrier between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit. the Bible says ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). The faith and grace that Jesus brings into our world crosses the Divine Spirit to human spirit barrier and allows the Divine nature to supersede and achieve what our human nature is unable to achieve. The material world and the Divine Spirit world are two distinct worlds and two distinct realities. God lives in the Spiritual world of the unseen as an uncreated being and we live in the world of the seen, as created beings. We can comfortably occupy this magnificently created world and see it and hear it and measure it and use it and appreciate it, but we need different eyes and ears to see and hear the unseen world.

God had to cross from the unseen world of the Spirit into the world of created humanity and find a way to get humanity into the world of the uncreated unseen world of the Spirit. The Bible says ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’ Jesus entered into humanity with his Divinity, and we enter into his Divinity with our humanity. This is a two-way transaction. This was God’s plan to make us partakers of his Divine nature and to create what the Bible calls the ‘New Creation’.

The Bible tells us what this supernatural two-way transaction is and how it takes place. It is called ‘Reconciliation’, and Paul is the only one who explains what that means and how the supernatural miracle work of reconciliation acts upon humanity through Jesus.
The word Reconciliation in the Bible here is katalasso – meaning ‘to change mutually’ (Strong’s Concordance). The word for reconciliation used here is different to the more common Bible usage of the word reconciliation (dialasso) about forgiving someone who has offended us.

Katalasso means that two things act upon one another to become one new thing. The supernatural miracle of God’s act of reconciliation for us is that he caused both himself and us to experience a change of Being to become a New Creation Being through Jesus. This miraculous mutual exchange is catalysed or enabled by the faith and the grace of Jesus that he brings into the equation. The Bible says we were saved by grace through faith and that was not of ourselves, it was the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). And that is what it means for us to have our new spiritual being in Christ.

2Cor 5.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, all things have become new. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself…
God became one of us – forever – both now as the risen Christ in Heaven, and in making us one with him within our hearts to become ‘partakers of his divine nature. We are in him, and he is in us - We are reconciled. It can be illustrated as an equation.

DIVINITY + HUMANITY + CATALYST (faith and grace of Jesus) = NEW CREATION.

Paul teaches about reconciliation but Jesus did not need to teach a parable of Reconciliation because the whole Bible is that parable - the story of the plan of God from before creation to send Jesus into the world to finally bring humanity through that impassable Divine barrier by the grace and faith of his Son.
But there is a modern-day parable about the crossing of another impassable barrier that wasn’t available in the time of Jesus. It is found in Medical Science, and it is called the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB). This impassable barrier protects the brain from substances in the bloodstream that are harmful to brain activity, selectively allowing only certain substances to pass through into the brain. But that barrier also makes it difficult for the delivery of a very effective hormonal substance into the brain which helps to restore and enhance neuronal brain function in Parkinsonism. It’s called dopamine - a large complex protein molecule.
To overcome this, a substance was synthesised called Levodopa which is able to pass through the blood brain barrier where it is catalysed by an enzyme in the brain that converts levodopa into dopamine – which then acts upon the nervous system allowing more bodily movement and positive motivation and enhancing heart function and peripheral blood flow.

When Jesus crossed the Divine/human barrier, through his faith and grace, the Bible said ‘All this is from God’. That supernatural work allows the Divine nature within us to supersede and achieve in us what we are not able to achieve in our own strength. Jesus brings Divinity through that human barrier so that he becomes the being and doing within us, and we can understand who we are and what we can do. That barrier is called the ‘veil’ in the Bible (Hebrews 10:x19) and on our side we need the faith and understanding of God’s miraculous work of reconciliation – the mutual exchange of our humanity with his Divinity. (Roman 5:10).

We play a role in this New Creation spiritual journey by cultivating a surrendered faith, believing that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:1). This involves "labouring" to enter into the rest of faith (Hebrews 4:11), which means ceasing from our own efforts and enduring the limitations of our humanity with patience. While we might often rely on our own strength to try and feel worthy of achieving this fulness of God, the gifts of faith and grace we have in Jesus says NO to this approach. Instead, we must practice holding together at the one time the reality of our world of human struggles and the reality of our world of New Creation faith – it takes practice – and neither of these worlds can be denied or avoided.
The Holy Spirit can then enable us to choose the world of the faith and grace of Jesus’ at work in us to overcome the world of human struggles. Struggles include tedious tasks and personal suffering of pain and sickness and loss and - burdens of prayer – Burden = spiritual struggle – Matt 11.28. This holding together and overcoming disposition means living in an unceasing state of hope for what God will show us what he is doing in our lives.

The Bible says that Faith is the evidence of things NOT seen (Hebrews 11:1), and what is not seen is the supernatural work of God on our behalf in the world of the unseen. The more we learn to endure the afflictive nature of this world upon our damaged souls the more we can enter into the rest of the faith of Jesus in his real world of the unseen (and that takes more practice). It is here where we can say ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me’ because we are doing his things and yet in an awesome kind of way, they have become our things. We thank you Lord that we can cross that human Divine barrier because we have been invited to live life together with you in the true reality of your healing and saving world of faith no matter how the other reality of the material world tries to disrupt our peace and oneness with you – in Jesus’ name - Amen.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 5 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER

We have come again to the place where the three Gospels all write about the same parable and it is about Jesus teaching the parable of the Sower. (Matthew 13:3 Mark 4:1–9 Luke 8:4).
Matthew 13:2 Great multitudes had gathered to Jesus, so that He got into a boat and sat down and the whole multitude stood on the shore. Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

Jesus then explains that last statement about having ears to hear which is found many times in many books in the Bible. He does this because the disciples interrupt him to ask him why he has to speak to the people in parables. He then says ‘Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. Jesus then speaks that challenging riddle - For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. (will look at that in a minute)

God has blessed them even more than the prophets of the past and had given them the grace to understand the hidden or deeper meaning of what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God because of the yielded state of their hearts. Jesus then explains that challenging riddle – It is that that their attitude of submission brings even more grace for them to receive even more understanding. That is entering into the ‘more for more’ equation of grace - as the Bible says ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). The grace that Jesus brings into the world crosses the Divine Spirit to human spirit barrier and allows the Divine nature to supersede what our human nature is able to understand and to do. But to the others who do not have hearts of submission to God, they will have their understanding taken from them because of the resistance in their hearts that stops them from ‘hearing’.
Jesus then goes back to what Isaiah prophesied in the past about Israel not hearing, to explain what is happening with those who were not hearing Jesus then and that includes us now.
‘And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled - hearing you will hear and not understand and seeing you will see and not perceive, for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and they would understand…
Isaiah then asks God ‘Until how long Lord? – until the cities are laid waste and the land is made desolate.’ In other words – until there is disorder and disarray everywhere - the world coming undone.

Those who do not ‘hear’ God end up with wrong perceptions, wrong logic, wrong reasoning, wrong conclusions, and wrong ideologies and belief systems - as is happening today. This lack of hearing accumulates and it is currently accumulating, and only harsh reality can put a dent in that kind of delusion. Driving on that highway results in nasty bumps and dents, and there are many people on that highway today and there are more bumps and dents to come.

The word in the Greek that Jesus uses for ‘hearing’ is akouo which in its simplest sense is to physically hear something that is said and to pay attention to it. A further intended sense of ‘to hear’ in the words of Jesus here is to understand what is said. But the ultimate intended sense in what Jesus is saying is for something to happen in our hearts when we do understand, and to turn towards God and to do what he says. It is interesting to note that the word for ‘obey’ in the Greek is hypakouo, and hypo means ‘under’ which explains the meaning of the word ‘to obey’ which means that we ‘hear under’ – or rather that what we hear is over our life like a banner or a flag that says that our heart has chosen to yield to what Jesus says to us.

Jesus then goes on to interpret the parable. He explains the meaning of the four different types of soil as representing four different states of the heart which are heart resistance, heart resilience, heart anxiety or heart submission. The seed sown by the wayside that the birds pluck out of the mind describes the state of a resistant heart that hears the word of the Kingdom and allows the Wicked One to take away any perception of its truth - because of a heart of inattention or indifference.
The seed of the word might be fine, but the wayside attitude is one of being on one’s own personal self-absorbed journey that wanders wherever its own self-serving ideas want to take it. This would make up probably the bulk of today’s society with little or no interest in understanding God’s Word. But I believe God is finding ways of getting peoples’ attention like never before – the Bible says Where sin abounds grace does much more abound (Romans 5:20)

The seed sown on stony ground, where the root cannot take hold because of a lack of soil for any roots to go down, describes the state of the heart as one of lacking resilience or staying power when life gets difficult, testing our faith in what we have heard. The parable says that he receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself but endures only for a while. This describes an impulsive or emotional heart that is enthusiastic and fascinated by something that sounds new and helpful but who can’t hang on to the truth of what he has heard deep within himself.

There is something deep within that he does not understand about himself which is fearful of suffering too much loss or disappointment and so he ‘endures’ for only a while. He thinks within himself ‘can I really trust God to be with me and for me in this situation?’ The Greek word for ‘endures’ here is eimi which means ‘I am’ – that is our sense of identity - so this person does not know the depth of his ‘I am’ with God and can only feel okay about his ‘I am’ with God for a little while. God can redeem this state of the heart by digging around that shallow rocky place and enriching the soil and letting him know that his ‘I am’ by the grace of God which crosses the human/Divine Spirit barrier allows him to be found within the ‘I am’ of Jesus. I believe that God is dealing with all of us graciously in these days in this way.

The seed sown on thorny ground where the thorns choke off the word describes the state of a heart that is distracted and anxious concerning the things of the world. Heart anxiety is not about resilience or resistance or even submission to God. It is just a state of not finding the place of inner stillness that allows us to ‘be still and know that I am God’. There is too much that has to be done and there’s just not enough time to ‘be still’ because something is likely to go wrong when it shouldn’t and that will make me more anxious. So I’ll just have to complain or protest even though that makes me even more anxious but at least I feel I’m doing something and that’s what counts.
But God can unchoke us. Jesus says Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy (elathro in the Greek), and my burden is light (elathro).” (Matthew 11:28). both those elathro words mean ‘easy’ which means that he wants to make it easy for us to be joined to him as he walks beside us (yoked to him). Jesus lifts from us the feelings of loss and failure that we bring to him in our burdened souls and we can now find rest for our souls, now yoked with Jesus instead of yoked to our anxiety.

The seed sown on good ground describes the state of a heart which is in submission to God and hears the word and understands it and obeys it (hypakouo- to hear under). We can be that person who ‘hears under’ – so that what we hear is over our life like a banner that says that our heart has chosen to yield to what Jesus says to us – we choose to yield and we produce the yield that God brings forth in us.
Remember in the parable Jesus said that some would yield a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirtyfold. But yielding only thirtyfold with a submissive and trusting heart does not mean we will miss out on becoming a hundredfold, because we enter into the ‘more for more’ equation of grace which I mentioned before ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). Crossing the human/Divine Spirit barrier by faith allows the Divine nature to supersede what our human nature is capable of understanding and doing, so that if we yield thirtyfold, we will get grace upon grace to yield sixtyfold, and then even more grace upon grace to yield one hundredfold, and as we read that in the parable - ‘For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance’. You have come that we may have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10.10).
Let us enter into the abundant life that is on offer from God today.
Thank you lord we all know the experience of each one of those four states of the heart, either too resistant, or not resilient enough, or too anxious, or getting stuck and not growing, and we all go through those seasons of feeling we are not yielding what we could or how we could. But our faith is in you as you bring us through that human/Divine barrier - so that you are the being and doing within us and we can understand who we are and what we can do - Amen.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 4 THE FIG TREE
The next parable that Jesus taught while he was still in Galilee is recorded in Luke Chapter twelve and it is about a fig tree that had not borne any fruit for three years and the owner of the vineyard had ordered the vinedresser to have it cut down.

Luke 13:6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilise it. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

This parable tells a different fig tree story to the other parables about fig trees that Jesus taught later in Jerusalem which were all about the signs of the times and his returning to the earth at his second coming (Matthew 24:32; Mark 13:28–31; Luke 21:29–33). However, there are certain similarities in the stories because of the fact that fig trees in the Bible are symbolic of God’s people Israel, and one of the major themes of fig tree narratives is about them bearing fruit, and we will look at those similarities at another time.

This parable tells a story about a healthy fig tree that showed potential but was not bearing fruit. In Bible days people would often grow fig trees in and around vineyards because the soil was good for growing vines and other trees. But the owner was also diligent about the use of the limited space that was available in the enclosed vineyard, and he wanted whatever was there to produce fruit otherwise it was a waste of space. There had been inspections with the vinedresser each year for three years and the owner thought that was enough time to make a final decision on whether it could stay or had to go.

There are some interesting peculiarities to this parable. One thing is that it has no real ending and in fact we have to write our own spiritual ending because in the end this parable is about hope and faith winning over despair, but it doesn’t discount the consequences of presumption or carelessness – like presuming that our fig leaves alone look good enough, and also not caring about anyone being blessed by the fruit that the tree is designed to produce.

The story says that the tree is getting to the point of having to be cut down, but then it graciously gets given an opportunity to become fruitful and to stay fruitful from that time on because there is someone there who wants to save a tree rather than lose a tree. Another peculiar fact is that the outcome will depend on not just the quality of the tree but on how intent the vinedresser is about giving the best to the tree for the tree to give the best of its fruit, and that would also involve what the vinedresser finds when he does some digging up and how nutritious the fertiliser is.
The tree has all the potential and the soil is good, and the leaves are healthy but it needs input and nurture somewhere deep down under the surface that can’t be seen from above the surface.

This parable can firstly be applied to the prior three years of ministry of Jesus to Israel and their failure to bear any fruit from all his teaching to them in those three years of the goodness of the Father and of his plan for their salvation and of the blessing of his mighty works of healing and provision as he lived amongst them and went about doing good. And at the end of those three years of the training of his twelve disciples plus the many other disciples most of whom we don’t have names for, there were some around him that wrote a wonderful ending to their ownstory as a fruitful tree. But there were some that sadly became offended or failed in their faith or were afraid of being associated with such a controversial person as Jesus. And there was the tragedy of Judas who took his own life rather than letting his old life die in exchange for the new life that Jesus would have given to him.

Jesus was the ultimate compassionate vinedresser who dug around the tree of Israel both corporately and individually and went deep into the soil of the hearts of each one to find wherever he could, a heart like that of King David who said to God ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart, Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting’.
Jesus came to his people to bend back the resistance of the nature of Adam in each one of them and to invite them into becoming partakers of his divine nature. He finally died on the cross for them and took their feelings of separation from God and their guilt and forsakenness upon himself, finally saying to his Father ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’. On that day of his death he was rejected by most of Israel, who can now be likened to the tree that Isaiah prophesied about, that was cut down and left as just a stump in the ground, waiting to be revived again in God’s time (Isaiah 6:13).

And of course, Jesus is also talking about all of us as fig trees in a good vineyard and looking to see if we are bearing fruit. And Jesus remains as the compassionate and dedicated vinedresser, and the vinedresser had lots of work to do back then for Israel, and he has lots to do now for all of us. There is a digging up around the tree of each one of us and there is the lifegiving and fertilising nutrient of his love and truth that brings life into each wounded and dying thing that is hidden deep within our roots. Jesus looks to see what kind of damage may have been done to those roots in the soil of our hearts as we first began attaching ourselves to our world around us.

Jesus looks at our roots now to see if they are grounded in his love, as the Apostle Paul says ‘that you, being rooted and grounded in God’s love, may have the strength to comprehend with all those who believe what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that love, knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ (Ephesians 3:17)
The parable said that the tree had to be cut down because it was wasting space, so there are times when the timing for us to accept the vinedresser’s digging and nutrifying activity becomes critical. The space that is being wasted is simply the time we waste in not responding to the gracious compassion and mercy and goodness of our vinedresser, Jesus, and not responding to the plan of our Father God for our fruitful and productive life on earth. The vinedresser’s nutrient lifegiving Word and Spirit transforms in us what is holding us back from growing the kind of fruit that says to starving people ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’.

Paul encourages us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to welcome home the new and true self which is created after the likeness of God and aligned with his heart and is devoted to him (Ephesians 4:19). Our faith allows us to see our true self the way God sees us and to live our new life as God created it to be lived. Each part of our vulnerable heart that has been wounded can now be healed, and each false image of our self that has covered us with shame can now be divinely remade in all its dignity. Every lie that we have wrongly believed about ourselves is now able to be corrected and brought into line with God’s idea of who we truly are. And whatever other peoples’ negative ideas have done to us to devalue our true worth are being erased by faith and truth, as the Holy Spirit recomposes our heavenly narrative. Our life was written by God for us in eternity by the Father, as David wrote in Psalm 139:16 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book.’ Amen…
So thank you Lord for causing our fig tree to blossom and for doing the digging in our hearts and we know we are not alone in those times but that you are walking around with us in our hearts and holding our hand and bringing new hope and new life and new growth. Amen.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 3 BUILDING BIGGER BARNS

We have been reading in chronological order the Gospel parables that are common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and there are also some that are only recorded in two of the three Gospels. And the next small group of parables that come in chronological order that we will do are only found in Luke. Today, we are looking at a parable in Luke 12, where Jesus teaches about a man building a bigger barn for more grain. We begin with Jesus answering a question from somebody in the large crowd.

Luke 12:16 Then one from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

In disputes like these, an arbitrator appointed by the synagogue would legally apportion property or wealth, and Jesus was not interested in this legal role. His mission was about people’s hearts and not about possessions or positions of power, and coveting was about possessions and power. Jesus taught people to have a good conscience and to be aware of the consequences of being covetous about those things and he now illustrates this by teaching us the nature of covetousness in the parable of the man driven to build a bigger barn.

Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build bigger barns, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry. “But God said to him, ‘You foolish man! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will all those things be which you have stored up for yourself?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself and does not find fulfillment in God.”
Jesus says a few verses later ‘Sell what you have stored up and give graciously to those in need; store up for yourselves the valuable assets which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not waste away, something that no thief can have access to or that could get eaten away by moths. For where your treasure is, that is where your heart will be also.’ (Luke 12 :34)

In this verse Jesus is addressing the issue of people having plenty of goods in store that they could easily sell off and convert into money that could be given to the poor who begged on the street or in front of the temple. This challenges people like the covetous rich man in the parable who accumulated his goods, thinking that what he owned defined who he was in order to feel fulfilled in his life – but he wasn’t growing in the grace and compassion that God wanted to grow in him, to be really fulfilled in his life.

Coveting comes from a feeling of unfulfillment and a mindset of insufficiency and scarcity. This mindset of never having enough shrinks our soul which now searches for fulfilment with yearnings for things that other people have, or for more than we already have and would ever need to have.
Those things we want and don’t have become the ‘good’ things we feel we need and the things we are left with become the not good enough things and even the ‘bad’ things. Coveting totally confuses our understanding of good and evil.

This parable is about understanding the difference between what the true inner treasure is of the good things that God has for our lives and the things we store up for ourselves because of that empty sense of inner unfulfillment and desolation.
A coveting unfulfillment mindset causes a downward spiritual spiral to shape our future. But God desires to reshape our future by giving us the inner fulfillment of living a life with him.

The human mind and heart became deceived about good and evil from the moment that Satan crafted a lie about God. Satan said to Eve You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of that tree you will be like him, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4)
Eve was made to think that God was withholding something good from them and Eve let that lie into her mind and heart and was left feeling unfulfilled and not having enough, and so did Adam, and they both believed it and ate the fruit. Darkness had put it into their minds that God would be threatened if they were to become like him and so he had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil.

The human mind and heart became deceived by the Prince of darkness concerning both the nature of God and the nature of good and evil. We as Mankind had now inherited the covetous mindset of confusion about what was good and what was bad and so from that time on whatever or whoever spoiled the getting of the good thing that we covet is bad, and that would even include God.

Lucifer, the mighty dark angel was there when God said ‘let us make man in our own image and after our likeness’ (Genesis 1:26). Lucifer was the first being to commit the sin of covetousness because he believed in his heart that he should be like God and not these puny human creatures. He has weaponised his corrupted knowledge of good and evil against humanity and has tempted them ever since with the same sin of covetousness. And that also became his resentful war against God.

He coveted the place that Jesus had, and that pride made him fall, and Jesus saw him fall. Luke 10:18 ‘I saw Satan fall as lightning’. Satan resented that he was created as a lesser being than God and he resented feeling insufficient and unfulfilled. He had deceived himself about who he should be and about what he wanted for himself and his eyes were opened to his own evil and his pride has kept them open.

Lucifer was also there when God summed up the disastrous beginning for humanity’s journey in life. He now comments on the effect and the cosequences of disobeying him and of heeding the lie of darkness. had observed the effect that their - Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, it may well be that he will reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22) (paradeisos - an enclosed garden, a place of protection (Luke 24:33). Satan would now cause Mankind to struggle in a world full of human covetousness, outside of the protected paradise of the Garden of Eden - a world that he had damaged with his lying darkness.

God knew that mankind could not handle their corrupted knowledge of good and evil but he had to cast them from the Garden of Eden or Paradise – because if they disobediently ate from the Tree of Life before humanity was ready for that Tree, then they would live forever trapped in their corrupted covetous confusion about good and evil. And God knew that Jesus, our Tree of Life would come and bring eternal life to humanity at the appointed time and then we would understand the true meaning of fulfilment and know that God is ‘good’. He desires to fulfill the lives of his children with his goodness toward them and not have them live trapped within their own interpretation of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’.

God becomes to us the source of all blessing and fulfillment in our lives. This allows us to pursue a mindset of inner peace and fulfillment in God within our spirit, which releases us to give out to God and to others graciously from that inner spiritual fulfillment. That movement of faith towards God further expands the inner spiritual life and expresses that fulfillment in our soul as a disposition of contentment where we trust that God will provide enough and we can say ‘I have enough’. God reaches out to us to heal that sense of forsakenness and desolation that turns our souls into an inner wilderness. He wants to awaken us to his promise to prepare a table of his goodness ad provision for us in our wilderness and to bless and fulfill our inner and outer lives and the lives of those around us. Amen

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GOSPEL PARABLES 1 SALT AND LIGHT
We have mentioned that there was a turning point in the public ministry of Jesus where because of his influence and miracle working power, he had become Public Enemy Number One, posing a threat to the Jewish leadership and also to the Roman Empire.
Up to this point we have been studying the major events of his ministry which was mostly in Galilee and after his baptism by John, and that period of time is believed to have taken a little over two years, up to when he appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration where he was visited by Moses and Elijah. The next period of a little over one year of his public ministry involves his setting his face to go to Jerusalem to be tried by the Jewish leaders and by Pilate and be sentenced to his death upon the cross.

Jesus taught a little more than forty parables over his entire ministry, with a handful being repeated in another Gospel with a different setting or time frame or emphasis. About half of the parables were taught in the two and a bit years before the time of his appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration. So, in order to keep the sequence of the Gospels narrative as tidy as possible I would like to now start discussing the first twenty or so parables that Jesus taught. He taught these in Galilee before the latter part of his journey from the Transfiguration through to his death and resurrection and ascension into Heaven. It is interesting to note that all the parables of Jesus are only taught in the three Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, with John’s Gospel only telling one parable in Chapter Ten of the story of the Good Shepherd and of Jesus saying that he is the door through which we enter the sheepfold.
We have already discussed the first two parables of Jesus in the beginning of this series, which dealt with patching new cloth onto old garments and putting new wine into old wineskins, and the next two parables are the ones concerning our being as salt in the earth and being as a light to the world.

Matthew writes in Chapter Five (also referenced in Mark 9:50; and Luke 14:34,),
‘You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its flavour, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.’
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, and people do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl but they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house’. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see that light in all you do and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16).
These parables come straight after Jesus had just been teaching the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount, about the Blessings of the Kingdom of God. In that sermon he was speaking to crowds of underprivileged people, the poor in spirit and those who mourned, and the pure in heart. He had been encouraging them to find within themselves the attitudes of faith and hope that would gain them entrance into the Kingdom of God that he had come to establish in the earth and that would be available after his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
But now here in these parables he is not urging them to find entrance into the Kingdom, he is telling them what the outcome in their lives would be if they did choose to enter that kingdom. They would flavour the earth with the essence of God. Their lives would be a light in a dark place that could not be hidden from sight, which is what those poor people were at the moment - they were out of sight and out of mind. But things would change for them. There is always an opportunity in all of our lives for things to change. We might want to see things change on the outside in the world around us, but Jesus is saying that the change will come first on the inside.

These words from Jesus are an invitation for people to enter into discipleship and to release the kingdom of God from within them. Many people seriously think that entering the Kingdom of God is about going to Heaven after surviving a difficult journey of life on earth.
Discipleship is not trying to get out of the earth and into heaven – it is getting Heaven into the earth right where we are, right here and now. The people that he was talking to would never have dreamt such a thing.

The interesting thing about the effectiveness of salt and light is that they don’t have to make speeches or even say anything at all. Salt doesn’t have to say how tasty it is. And our spiritual salt just has to flavour the spiritual atmosphere with the essence of the nature of God – and people will taste and see that the Lord is good! Light does not have to make a sound; it just allows something to be seen for what it is, and it will speak volumes of unuttered truth.
When you flavour the atmosphere as salt you allow the nature of God that has been formed in your soul to permeate the atmosphere of peoples’ minds and hearts and cause them to absorb that atmosphere and have it bond to their inner spiritual life.

There is an interesting weather modification process that is used to get rain to fall in dry areas for agricultural purposes. It is called ‘salting or seeding the atmosphere’ and it allows particles of moisture to precipitate around certain salt compounds of sodium chloride and potassium and silver iodide that provokes showers of rain to fall upon the earth. The engineering challenge is to find the methods of getting the salts up into just the right atmospheric conditions to form the raindrops, and gravity does the rest, and the earth is blessed.

We can salt the Heavenly Spiritual atmosphere which it is already there waiting for us. By having our hearts prepared in prayer our faith finds that Heavenly atmosphere where we can seed it with the salt and savour of God’s nature and release the rain of the Holy Spirit to fall upon the earth (David’s prayer as incense (Ps141.2). We are at rest and the earth gets blessed and there is the good soil of people’s hearts ready to receive and believe and bring forth life. It would be a shame for the good salt of a person’s soul to not find that heavenly atmosphere and be left lying on the ground and get trodden underfoot by the atmosphere of this world.

Reading on in Matthew 5 we see Jesus using potent metaphors to convey a spiritual message to his followers about their role as his light in the world.
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. And people do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl but they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see the light in you that is shining through in all you do and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)
God says his people are a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. This is the city that is calling people home in these days, the wanderers and the weary. The Bible says that Abraham looked for a city whose builder and maker is God - a heavenly City, and this city of God’s people in the earth reflects the heavenly City. It is not a man made bustling busy city, but a God made city of peace and love. In the world people flock to big cities and get lost, but with God’s city people come to that place and are found, and they find themselves and they find God.
All over the world in the last few years many big cities from the Middle East and into Europe and throughout our Western civilization have become more and more places of violence and unexpected danger, and there exists now a phenomenon of what is called urban warfare with military strategies as never seen before - our cities are no longer a place of settled peace.
The city of God is his place of peace and refuge, and it can no longer be hidden. It is no longer a quaint fringe institution or a rowdy corporate event agency competing for relevance in the modern world. It is where there are communities of God that are grounded in faith and love.

Jesus goes on to speak about the people in that city, and the light of God that is within them. If light dwells within someone it will shine through on the outside without them having to endorse themselves – light endorses itself.
In 2 Corinthians Chapter Four Paul writes about Satan, the god of this world who is blinding the minds of those who don’t understand or believe and are unable to see the light of the Message of Jesus. He goes on to say. For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God in the presence (prosopon -presence or face) of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile vessels of clay containing this treasure. (2Corinthians 4:6-7).
Darkness cannot penetrate anything - it can only hide or shroud truth. Only light can penetrate that darkness that blinds peoples’ minds and if it has shone into a person’s heart it will shine into the surrounding darkness. There are people in that city on the hill that shine a light into the world around them and it is not because they want recognition. Jesus said ‘In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see the light in you that is shining through in all you do and they will give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)
That light leads people out of darkness, and it will guide them forward on a pathway of light. Amen

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GOSPELS PARABLES 2 BUILDING ON ROCK OR SAND
Matthew 7:24 Luke 6:46

The next parable that Jesus taught was about a man who either builds a house upon a rock or builds his house upon the sand.
Matthew 7:24 Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

When we look at the final comment in that Scripture, we see that it says that the people recognised that Jesus had authority when he spoke, not like the scribes. The scribes would quote other well-known rabbis, but Jesus never quoted a single rabbi. His authority meant that he knew that what he said was true and what he said is what he lived, which is the basic theme of the parable about building your life on the right foundation, the rock and not the sand.

The relevance of this parable is not a stand-alone parable. is that it is spoken in reference to seven prior sayings of Jesus that he has just spoken from Matthew 7:1. Jesus had been sharing sayings (logos) with the people that were foundational. They were sayings that needed to be heard and put into practice, otherwise they would just be idle words that could not be built upon.

There are seven ‘sayings’ starting from Matthew Chapter 7 and verse 1 that Jesus speaks before teaching that parable about building a house on the right foundation, and they are; Do not judge others. Vs 1. Throwing pearls before swine vs.6. Asking the Father for good things Vs.7. Doing for others what you would have them to do for you Vs.12. Entering through the narrow gate.Vs.13. Recognizing people by their fruits not their advertising campaigns (false prophets). Vs.15. Saying to Jesus Lord, Lord but not living our life for him as our Lord. Vs.21

Jesus then talks about the forces that come against the house that you build, which is your life. ‘And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. (That Rock is Christ)

The story is about building a house that will stand through the times of natural affliction of wind and storm and floods, and the spiritual application of that is for people’s lives being able to last through the experiential and relational afflictions of life, because the house represents our life being built on a firm foundation – the rock of faith in Jesus and not the sand of human effort. These inner afflictions of life are like high impact forces of nature – they come and go and leave some maintenance work behind and some attendance to any weak spots but life goes on and we end up stronger because of the faithful resilience we are taught at these times.

But what about the house that is built upon the sand? Sand is made of the same material as rock, and is the result of the breaking down of the cohesive and reliable structure of rock over a long time into the non-cohesive unreliable form of sand. the ground of Galilee where Jesus was teaching had large, basalt rock shelves buried just below the sandy soil surface – just the right place the perfect place for a house to be built. However foolish people who didn’t check below the surface might expediently choose a cosier location near the palm trees closer to the river or in a sheltered valley where there was no rock underneath - and the house would not withstand the floods and wind and storm.

Our society has chosen the sandy soil of its expedient self-serving choices and much of the rock of Judaeo-Christian culture has been discarded or despised over the years, so that much of what has been built cannot stand the social and political and economic storms and raging winds – the house is not standing strong and things need to change and the strong foundations be reestablished.

But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

We said earlier that there were seven ‘sayings’ (logos – creative foundational design words) starting from Matthew Chapter 7 and verse 1 that Jesus spoke that had to be put into practice to give meaning in his teaching of the parable about building a house on the right foundation.

The first one was ‘Do not judge others, in verse 1. This speaks about seeing the spot in our brother’s eye and not seeing the big blob in our own eye. Not seeing the big blob in our own eye means that we are blind and cannot see who we really are and yet we think we know exactly what is wrong with someone else. It is a sign of a defensive ego trying to feel better about itself by making someone else look worse. That brings disconnection with other people and there is no real peace or fulfillment in that. Disconnection with others in this way also means disconnection with our real self and disconnection with God - and that robs us of the great gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness to us which brings peace and fulfillment into our lives. God want us to not crush into sand his rock of compassion and mercy that comes from him and is then extended to another imperfect person. His amazing grace wants us to be able to say, ‘Was blind but now I see!’

The second one was ‘Don’t throw your pearls before swine’ (verse 6) and that could sound a bit mean, but it simply means not trying to please or impress someone who despises what you aspire to as a treasured value in your life. It is what you do and not your impressive talk that finally makes the difference to what can be built upon.

The third one was about asking your Heavenly Father for good things (verse 7) - if a son asks his father for bread, will he be given a stone? We can expect that our Father God will give us the best thing for our need and this is the wisest way to learn how to trust in God and to learn the true lessons of his giving us what is really good for us and not what we sometimes think would be best. Not knowing what that good thing is for us has caused many a house to collapse and also many a nation to fall. Our current culture builds on that sandy foundation with its negative bias and confusing social experiments and the wearing away of our principled cultural foundations. But there is an answer for us in these perilous days, and that is to pray for God to expose what is toxic for our nation and to show us what is his good for our nation and then to live within his principled goodness. That will allow the bedrock of a godly foundation to emerge for this nation to build on.

The fourth one was ‘do for others what you would have them to do for you’ (verse12).
This is more than just being under obligation to return favours. This is about us demonstrating that we are there for some other person, and this creates in them a sense of being valued by us. This grows a desire within their heart to be that person of value in relationship with us and to want to be there for us. Strengthening this kind of bond in relationships grows us in our spiritual stature of being gracious and grateful. It is also a foundation for communities to grow in mutual service and respect and even for a nation to grow in unity and strength under God.

The fifth one was ‘enter through the narrow gate that leads to life’. (verse 13). This was not designed to make life burdensome or oppressive to enter a life of the blessings of God. It is designed to minimise going down all the blind alleys of self-serving interests that cause all the unnecessary regrets and disappointments. Going down blind alleys wastes opportunities for getting God’s guidance and wisdom, yet he faithfully waits to give us the best life that waits for us to choose it.

The sixth one was ‘recognizing people by their fruits and not their advertising campaigns’ There were many false prophets speaking from their own hearts and minds at that time. The world even penalises people that practice false advertising because it corrodes community trust until people stop believing in promises that are claimed to be true. The internet is an unrestricted playground for anyone to speak their prophesies from who knows what ego agenda or background. The Bible says ‘despise not prophesying but test all things and hold fast to what is good. (1Thessalonians 5:20). Testing all things means examining the track record of false predictions, especially of religious political activists, as well as testing the track record of the character and moral and ethical behaviour of the people doing the promising. There is one foundational rock of truth – Christ alone, Cornerstone.

The seventh one was ‘calling Jesus Lord but not living our life for him as our Lord’.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’(verse 21).
We can assure ourselves that we are known of God when we name Jesus as Lord, and say that we believe he is the God who is also the Man who created the Universe and upholds everything in it by the power of his word. We are also saying we believe that he is the Man who is also God who loved us so much that he laid down his life for us and joined his divine life to our human life. We are also saying that we believe that he will guide us in our life journey and lead us into truth and bless us with all spiritual blessings in our souls. After affirming Jesus as Lord in that way we aspire to do the things that he tells us to do. Saying yes to him in that way is building our house – our life – upon the rock, not upon the sand. Amen.

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GOSPEL PARABLES 1 SALT AND LIGHT
We have mentioned that there was a turning point in the public ministry of Jesus where because of his influence and miracle working power, he had become Public Enemy Number One, posing a threat to the Jewish leadership and also to the Roman Empire.
Up to this point we have been studying the major events of his ministry which was mostly in Galilee and after his baptism by John, and that period of time is believed to have taken a little over two years, up to when he appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration where he was visited by Moses and Elijah. The next period of a little over one year of his public ministry involves his setting his face to go to Jerusalem to be tried by the Jewish leaders and by Pilate and be sentenced to his death upon the cross.

Jesus taught a little more than forty parables over his entire ministry, with a handful being repeated in another Gospel with a different setting or time frame or emphasis. About half of the parables were taught in the two and a bit years before the time of his appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration. So, in order to keep the sequence of the Gospels narrative as tidy as possible I would like to now start discussing the first twenty or so parables that Jesus taught. He taught these in Galilee before the latter part of his journey from the Transfiguration through to his death and resurrection and ascension into Heaven. It is interesting to note that all the parables of Jesus are only taught in the three Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, with John’s Gospel only telling one parable in Chapter Ten of the story of the Good Shepherd and of Jesus saying that he is the door through which we enter the sheepfold.
We have already discussed the first two parables of Jesus in the beginning of this series, which dealt with patching new cloth onto old garments and putting new wine into old wineskins, and the next two parables are the ones concerning our being as salt in the earth and being as a light to the world.

Matthew writes in Chapter Five (also referenced in Mark 9:50; and Luke 14:34,),
‘You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its flavour, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.’
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, and people do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl but they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house’. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see that light in all you do and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16).
These parables come straight after Jesus had just been teaching the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount, about the Blessings of the Kingdom of God. In that sermon he was speaking to crowds of underprivileged people, the poor in spirit and those who mourned, and the pure in heart. He had been encouraging them to find within themselves the attitudes of faith and hope that would gain them entrance into the Kingdom of God that he had come to establish in the earth and that would be available after his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
But now here in these parables he is not urging them to find entrance into the Kingdom, he is telling them what the outcome in their lives would be if they did choose to enter that kingdom. They would flavour the earth with the essence of God. Their lives would be a light in a dark place that could not be hidden from sight, which is what those poor people were at the moment - they were out of sight and out of mind. But things would change for them. There is always an opportunity in all of our lives for things to change. We might want to see things change on the outside in the world around us, but Jesus is saying that the change will come first on the inside.

These words from Jesus are an invitation for people to enter into discipleship and to release the kingdom of God from within them. Many people seriously think that entering the Kingdom of God is about going to Heaven after surviving a difficult journey of life on earth.
Discipleship is not trying to get out of the earth and into heaven – it is getting Heaven into the earth right where we are, right here and now. The people that he was talking to would never have dreamt such a thing.

The interesting thing about the effectiveness of salt and light is that they don’t have to make speeches or even say anything at all. Salt doesn’t have to say how tasty it is. And our spiritual salt just has to flavour the spiritual atmosphere with the essence of the nature of God – and people will taste and see that the Lord is good! Light does not have to make a sound; it just allows something to be seen for what it is, and it will speak volumes of unuttered truth.
When you flavour the atmosphere as salt you allow the nature of God that has been formed in your soul to permeate the atmosphere of peoples’ minds and hearts and cause them to absorb that atmosphere and have it bond to their inner spiritual life.

There is an interesting weather modification process that is used to get rain to fall in dry areas for agricultural purposes. It is called ‘salting or seeding the atmosphere’ and it allows particles of moisture to precipitate around certain salt compounds of sodium chloride and potassium and silver iodide that provokes showers of rain to fall upon the earth. The engineering challenge is to find the methods of getting the salts up into just the right atmospheric conditions to form the raindrops, and gravity does the rest, and the earth is blessed.

We can salt the Heavenly Spiritual atmosphere which it is already there waiting for us. By having our hearts prepared in prayer our faith finds that Heavenly atmosphere where we can seed it with the salt and savour of God’s nature and release the rain of the Holy Spirit to fall upon the earth (David’s prayer as incense (Ps141.2). We are at rest and the earth gets blessed and there is the good soil of people’s hearts ready to receive and believe and bring forth life. It would be a shame for the good salt of a person’s soul to not find that heavenly atmosphere and be left lying on the ground and get trodden underfoot by the atmosphere of this world.

Reading on in Matthew 5 we see Jesus using potent metaphors to convey a spiritual message to his followers about their role as his light in the world.
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. And people do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl but they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see the light in you that is shining through in all you do and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)
God says his people are a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. This is the city that is calling people home in these days, the wanderers and the weary. The Bible says that Abraham looked for a city whose builder and maker is God - a heavenly City, and this city of God’s people in the earth reflects the heavenly City. It is not a man made bustling busy city, but a God made city of peace and love. In the world people flock to big cities and get lost, but with God’s city people come to that place and are found, and they find themselves and they find God.
All over the world in the last few years many big cities from the Middle East and into Europe and throughout our Western civilization have become more and more places of violence and unexpected danger, and there exists now a phenomenon of what is called urban warfare with military strategies as never seen before - our cities are no longer a place of settled peace.
The city of God is his place of peace and refuge, and it can no longer be hidden. It is no longer a quaint fringe institution or a rowdy corporate event agency competing for relevance in the modern world. It is where there are communities of God that are grounded in faith and love.

Jesus goes on to speak about the people in that city, and the light of God that is within them. If light dwells within someone it will shine through on the outside without them having to endorse themselves – light endorses itself.
In 2 Corinthians Chapter Four Paul writes about Satan, the god of this world who is blinding the minds of those who don’t understand or believe and are unable to see the light of the Message of Jesus. He goes on to say. For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God in the presence (prosopon -presence or face) of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile vessels of clay containing this treasure. (2Corinthians 4:6-7).
Darkness cannot penetrate anything - it can only hide or shroud truth. Only light can penetrate that darkness that blinds peoples’ minds and if it has shone into a person’s heart it will shine into the surrounding darkness. There are people in that city on the hill that shine a light into the world around them and it is not because they want recognition. Jesus said ‘In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see the light in you that is shining through in all you do and they will give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)
That light leads people out of darkness, and it will guide them forward on a pathway of light. Amen

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GOSPELS 17 THE TRANSFIGURATION
The turning point in the public ministry of Jesus where he now becomes Public Enemy Number One was the message of Jesus to the disciples about taking up the cross. He had said he was going to the cross and now that journey begins. He had become an enemy to the Jewish leaders, and many of his followers had turned away from him. His influence over his followers included people even among his close disciples who wanted him to fulfill his mysterious Kingdom statements and become a political power to rule the world - so now he was going to become a threat even to the Roman Empire, not just because of his commanding influence, but also because of the powerful demonstration of the the undeniable miracles that astonished everybody.

The Bible says in Matthew and Mark and Luke that six days after Jesus had just spoken about us taking up our cross he took his disciples up to the Mount of Transfiguration. The Apostle Peter also describes this event in his second epistle. (2Peter 1:16–18 Matthew 17:1 Mark 9:1–13; Luke 9:27–36). Reading on now from Matthew,
Matthew 17:1 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them, as his face began to shine like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared and began talking with Jesus.
Jesus was meeting with Moses, Israel’s deliverer and Lawgiver, who encouraged Jesus, the one who had been victorious over sin and temptation and had become the fulfilment of the Law for Israel. Jesus was meeting also with Elijah, the prophet that destroyed the idols of Israel, and overcame all the powers of Baal when he brought fire down from heaven on top of Mt. Carmel. He encouraged Jesus, the one who had overcome all darkness and had become the fulfilment of all the prophesies concerning the eternal destiny of not only Israel but of all Mankind.

But then Luke adds a significant comment that doesn’t appear in the other Gospels. He says that Moses and Elijah spoke to Jesus of His decease (exodus) which He would soon accomplish at Jerusalem, and the Greek word for decease used here does not mean death, the word is exodus. The journey of Jesus, from his cross on the earth and then to the grave and then to the Heavens was his exodus. (Luke 9:30).
And Just as God accomplished Israel’s exodus from Egypt, being led out of bondage as slaves to Pharaoh and led into the Promised Land of Canaan, Jesus is our exodus out of the bondage of the afflictive confusion and disorder of this world. Our togetherness exodus life with Jesus leads us not only out of bondage to the past but into the promise of ‘all spiritual blessings in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:4). Israel was given the real estate of a Promised Land. We are given a spiritual Promised Land great and precious promises of becoming partakers of the nature of God through faith. We have been taken out - in order to enter in.

Matthew writes that while Moses and Elijah were there together with Jesus, Peter spoke up and said, “Lord, it’s wonderful for us to be here! If you want, I’ll make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Here was another one of Peter’s good ideas that wasn’t a God idea - Peter was thinking ‘It doesn’t get better than this so let’s keep it going!’ and again his good idea was interrupted by God’s idea from heaven. Matthew writes ‘But even as Peter spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. hear him” (Matthew 17 4-8). At this the disciples fell face downward to the ground, terribly frightened. Jesus came over and touched them. “Get up,” he said, “don’t be afraid.” And when they looked, only Jesus was with them.
Perhaps it is fitting that Peter is the only Apostle who writes about this occasion in 2Peter 1:16 and we can see that he came to know how to ‘hear him’. He had learned to hear Jesus above all his own opinions and above all the other legalistic voices and religious opinions and false prophesies that were abounding in his day. He wrote, ‘… We saw his majestic splendour with our own eyes when he received honour and glory from God the Father and the majestic voice of God said to him, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard that voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. Because of that experience, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets. You must pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place—until the Day dawns, and Christ the Morning Star shines in your hearts. (2Peter 1:16-19)
Matthew continues the story from the place where Moses and Elijah had gone back into the Heavens, and Jesus and the disciples descended from the mountain. Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone what they had seen until after his resurrection, and the disciples then asked Jesus why the scribes had said Elijah must come before the Christ Messiah came. This was also prophesied by Malachi in the last verse of the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament - I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5,6).

Jesus answered them; “Elijah does come and will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but he had to suffer and was killed. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. They understood then that Jesus meant that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah and so was not recognised. They were still left with the quandary of Jesus saying that Elijah would still come, and he would restore all things, so they wondered why Elijah had just appeared on the mountain and left again, and when and why was he going to come a second time? They knew Malachi's prophecy about Elijah coming before the Great day of the Lord to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the children to the fathers so when would that happen? They didn’t yet understand about the second coming of Jesus in the Last days and about the need for the ministry of the spirit of Elijah for the healing of family relationships in the earth in the last days before Jesus comes the second time – parents and children and brothers and sisters.

Jesus had just likened the ministry of John the Baptist to the ministry of Elijah, in coming to prepare the way for Jesus. But there was a curious difference between the ministries of John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus the first time and of Elijah preparing the way for Jesus to come the second time. When John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah he was arrested and killed and that would also happen to Jesus. But Elijah was never arrested and killed as a prophet in his day –Elijah finally ended up going straight to Heaven in a Chariot, and he had just now made a return visit to Jesus on the top of a mountain. That means that Elijah is still alive, and he has to come back again and restore those things of the healing of families that prepare the way for the second coming of Jesus, as Jesus had just said. That completes the John the Baptist and Elijah picture that Jesus is giving us.

People are understandably eager to see revival in our day and in our land, and to witness the power and the glory of God in the midst, and it has happened from time to time over the last two thousand years – revivals come and go. It would be a double blessing if the prophetic word spoken through the prophet Malachi of God’s burden about restoring families in the earth could be part of the foundation and the framework for another outpouring of the Holy Spirit, for the softening of the hearts for God’s family of humanity in the earth. That would be a new kind of revival. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is described by the prophet Hosea as the rain that falls to bring forth the harvest, and the rain comes first as the gentle rain that softens the earth and then comes the latter rain that energises the yield of the crop for harvest.
Hosea 6:3 Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, Like the former and latter rain to the earth.

The world at this time is like one big unforgiving family quarrel with bitter hostility from one group being aimed at another group and no holds barred, and the only currency that is being valued is power over others. People prize the power to judge and condemn those who do not agree with them. The true currency of God’s people is God’s love and truth and the mercy that will bring about the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace. This can begin among people who know their God. This is God’s work, and it has started with God and it will continue, and by his grace we will hear the voice of his Beloved Son as he speaks from the Father’s heart into this world now. This is something that we do not make happen because it cannot be forced and it will be resisted, but we can be there ready to respond when God shows us that he is doing something in setting up occasions for love and truth and mercy to occur that we could not have arranged, and we then open our hearts to it and see the Holy Spirit at work in our world.
let's pray that by the grace of God we could be able to say ‘these are the days of Elijah- Amen… It's interesting that when Peter wrote after he'd learned to ‘hear him’ he then said listen to what the prophets said – take earnest heed to what they're saying - he was talking about those ones that were speaking about Jesus being the fulfilment of all prophecy. He's giving us a key there, he was saying there are things hidden there that the prophets have said and they have a day and a time and an hour to be fulfilled.

They won’t be simply filled as some kind of historic event that's very interesting for people to read about on the news. They will fulfil the eternal purpose of God its all about whattalk about what Jesus is doing. every prophecy written in the Old Testament is something that only Jesus could fulfil some of them have not yet not been fulfilled - in fact it was James that said for the Lord will not come until the restoration of all things when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. We move towards times of refreshing every time we come closer to the Lord - yes James said the heavens will retain him, watching over, until those times of refreshing come. It is a dry earth that we see today.

Thank you, Lord for your Holy Spirit, falling now. If we can just be on our toes in the spirit as it were, with no sense of urgency but a mindfulness of the importance of what God's heart is for this world - even in sending his Son that none should perish, or be wasted - that’s what that word means - and receive eternal life. Bring people that you have in your heart before you - bring them before the Lord. So thank you Lord - you're doing this work. The gentle rain is happening now, I don't know how – and I think if the heavy rain came we wouldn't be ready, we’d make another denomination of it - and we have 36,000 already and we don't need another mega one with a special kind of brand, with people vying for a place of recognition and influence. We need God to work in our hearts, joining with one another in agreement. These are the days of Elijah!

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GOSPELS 16 TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

In the three Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, (Matthew 16:21 Mark 8:31; Luke 9:21), after Jesus declares that he is the rock upon which he would build his church, he straightaway tells his disciples not to talk to anyone about that fact that he is the Christ, and he then says, ‘I must suffer many things at the hands of the Jewish leaders and be rejected by them and be killed, and after three days I will rise again’ (Mark 8:31).
Peter immediately takes Jesus aside and scolds him for saying a thing like that. Peter has just previously had a revelation that Jesus is the Christ and was probably feeling a little heady with all the authority that Jesus said was coming his way, along with the promise about being given keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. So Peter decides to weigh in on this plan of Jesus, which was far too negative for his liking.

To Peter’s surprise Jesus did not seem grateful for Peter’s kind-hearted advice. Jesus turned and faced all the disciples and said very sternly to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are not mindful (phrone?? - a focussed conscious awareness) of the things of God but of the things of man’
From that moment on Peter began to painfully learn time after time that what he often thought were good ideas were not God ideas. Peter was to learn what it meant to be ‘mindful’, consciously aware, of what God was saying through Jesus and not what his opinion was of what he thought God should be saying – a very common error that he shares with a few billion more of us.
That is why Jesus made that peculiar remark at the beginning of this reading when he told the disciples not to mention that he was the Christ, because Jesus did not want his disciples and followers giving their random human opinions about him as God, to people, and he also didn’t need or want notoriety. His whole aim was for his followers to know him personally as God. It is only then that their words would have life. There was coming the day when Jesus would have risen from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to the earth and his followers would be living in and speaking from the Kingdom of Heaven that was within them. It is from that inner Kingdom place in us today that we can speak words of life that come from him, and not just our learned opinions about him.

Then Jesus called his disciples and the crowds to come over and listen to him and he said, ‘If any man wants to come after me let him deny himself (there’s the me self and the together with God self) and take up his cross and follow (akolouthe?? - accompany) Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever would lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? – These are weighty words. They could have a primary place in what could be called a ‘Christian Manifesto’

Jesus was instantiating a new way to live a new kind of life (that word instantiating means not only to model something but to be the first person to ever model it). It means for us that some kind of life within us would have to die so that a greater life within us could live. This had never even been thought of before – people had always just had to try harder to get better at living the one life that they had. Jesus described how he would bring this new process of life out of death into being for humanity by his own death and resurrection, and he said in another place ‘unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it abides alone but if it dies it bears much fruit. (John 12:24).
I will now quote that Scripture from the Living Bible ‘I must fall and die like a grain of wheat that falls into the furrows of the earth. Unless I die I will stay alone, as a single seed. But my death will produce many new wheat grains—a plentiful harvest of new lives’.
A seed contains the energy within it that can release a new kind of life that looks totally different to the original life form of the seed. The outer shell or husk must experience being hidden within the dark moist and nutritious substrate of good soil that awakens a new form of a hidden inner life to be invigorated. This new life breaks forth upwards out of the soil and into the light and air into its true life form, and its destined growth and purpose and reproduction.

Jesus was a unique seed that went into the ground and died. That seed had both human life and divine life from Heaven within it and that seed not only rose again with a new resurrected life power for himself, but he released a harvest of this new resurrected life power for all of humanity to receive through the power of the Holy Spirit that was sent to all mankind at Pentecost. That new life form had never been seen before – God and humanity joined together. That is our new life and that was the work of the cross!

If you thought that taking up your cross and denying yourself meant self-discipline and mindfulness you would be correct. That is why Jesus had to rebuke Peter when he gave Jesus his kind-hearted advice about him not having to suffer and take up his cross. He told Peter that he was not being mindful (phrone?? - living in conscious awareness) of the things that God was saying and doing but only of the things that man could say and do.
When Jesus tells us to deny our ‘human self-serving self’ which wants to have everything its own way, he is telling us that we are choosing to take up our cross by dying to that self-centred bias in us so that we can release the new ‘spiritual self’ life of Christ that is now planted within us. That choice requires a conscious awareness of faith that a new life is always springing up out of the death of the old life. This conscious awareness of faith is the Bible’s hallmark cause and effect activity that consistently yields the fruit of a true Christian life.

So, does that mean that taking up our cross means living a killjoy miserable life – all work and no play, and trying to look more virtuous than everyone else?
No – it means being self-disciplined and mindful of the true person that you now are in Christ through the revealed truth from God into your spirit. That means just the opposite to living a killjoy miserable life because it allows our soul to come out of the chaotic disorder of this worlds thinking and into the peace and order and joy and harmony of a Kingdom ordered mind. Our limited human nature with its bias towards self-serving and self-advantage weakens the resolve of our struggling soul to express the full potential of our true spiritual nature.

That is what Jesus means when next he says ‘if you save your (demanding old self centred) life you lose it (your new fulfilled Spiritual Kingdom life) and when you lose your life you save it’. And he goes on to say ‘For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Jesus then gets serious with his disciples and all who were listening (including us) and says ‘And anyone who is ashamed of me and my message in these days of unbelief and sin, I, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when I return in the glory of my Father, with the holy angels.’
That is God sadly saying to us whom he lovingly cares for ‘If you put me at the back of the line by not being grateful to me for doing all that I am doing for you - then you are actually putting yourself at the back of the line for getting my approval and all that goes with it when I come in my glory to settle things up’.
And Jesus concludes with the following very timely thought – ‘Truly I say unto you, that there are some of you standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power’.

That statement tells us that there would have been many people there at that time that were still living when Jesus rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit. They would have received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and lived in the power of the ‘Kingdom of God’ just as we can now today if we believe and do what Jesus has just been saying. Unfortunately, Judas was not one of them. He decided to end his life in deep despair and regret instead of waiting for Jesus his friend who loved him, to die instead of him and to heal his soul and give it new life. And I don’t presume to know his soul’s end, and we don’t know about the souls of any others back then or here and now. But we can be eternally grateful that we know that the words that Jesus said to all those disciples have that same deep significance for us.

We can live an astounding Kingdom life that we enter into through the grace of God and our faith in Jesus, and by being mindful, having a mindset of conscious awareness that he is supernaturally working on our behalf at any given moment of time. Capture the now because that's when it is working - sit with it and be grateful and get to the front of the line – that’s our God. And even if we feel we're not faithful the Bible says he remains faithful and he will pull us back in - our human capacity to stay faithful is so limited with all of the moods and circumstances and disappointments and ‘what's it all about anyway’. God comes in and says ‘I'm still here I'm drawing you back in, it's now it's the start of the new life every moment just step into it’. Be mindful now of the new life that you have - the cause and effect holds true - life out of death. You might think how much repenting do I have to do to do this cross thing?

I believe our repentance is simply out of unbelief into belief – repentance unto life. We don't say if only the past hadn't happened – it did. God is saying I'm giving you the gift of ‘now’. When we say to the Lord I choose to believe that you are my new ‘together with you’ life, that faith sweeps away the old self-centred life. It does it for you – it overpowers the old life - it's called grace. So we don't beat ourself up in guilt, and don’t hide ourself in shame. We declare ourselves a child of God – redeemed.

That faith lifts us above everything in the past. It is the exchange of one life for the other. The new life just drowns the old one. If we lose our life - we save it. Jesus knew how to use shorthand. He didn't use a lot of words but the words he said were packed with meaning. We don't go around regretting our old life, we swap it – the exchanged life and our soul rejoices, it is saved and healed - it's the start of the new life every moment. Let us just step into it in Jesus’s name. Amen.

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GOSPELS 15 UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH
In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, after the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus declaring Himself the Bread from heaven, Jesus and the disciples travelled to Caesarea Philippi, a Roman colony near Syria and Lebanon. This affluent, idolatrous area, devoid of Jewish crowds and synagogues, was an unusual place for Jesus to visit, but he had a purpose. It was here where Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do the crowds say that I am?"
The disciples said that people thought Jesus might be John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another resurrected prophet, indicating that the people held Jesus in high regard as sent by God, and they believed in resurrection, but they did not fully recognize him as the Messiah.

Jesus then asks His disciples, "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." This contrasts with a previous moment when the other disciples also said that, when the disciples were rowing in the boat across the sea of Galilee, and Jesus walked on water towards them and entered their boat and they exclaimed in excitement and awe "Truly you are the Son of God." However, excitement and awe is not revelation from God, and here in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus tells Peter, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." He then says, "You are Peter (Petros, a piece of a rock), and upon this rock (petra, a mass of rock) I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:16-19).
Jesus is saying that He Himself is the Rock (petra) on which He will build His Church. Peter's revelation from God about Jesus being the Christ made Peter (Petros – a piece of rock) the first of many who would receive this revelation and become stones built together as the Church upon the Rock, which is Jesus, not Peter. Later, Peter writes in his epistles that all who have the revelation that Jesus is the Christ are also living stones, (and pieces of the Rock like himself) that are being built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

Throughout the Bible, Jesus the Christ is portrayed as the eternal Rock of God.
"Trust in the LORD forever, for the Lord God is the Rock of Ages." (Isaiah 26:4), and one story illustrating this truth is Jacob's vision at Bethel(The house of God), where after deviously obtaining the inheritance of Abraham, and after resting his head up on a stone and falling asleep he sees a vision of the gates of Heaven. In the morning he awakes and he anoints a stone which symbolizes Christ the anointed Rock, (Genesis 28:12). In the New Testament, Paul describes Christ as the Spiritual Rock that provided water for Israel in the wilderness when Moses struck the rock which poured forth the water of life (1 Corinthians 10:4). Paul also affirms that "no other foundation can any man lay other than that which is Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11).

When Jesus said to His disciples, that he was the Rock on which he would build his Church and give them the keys of the Kingdom he was addressing all twelve disciples, not just Peter, and he was charging them with a future spiritual authority to be delegated to the entire Church community. The initial leadership of the apostles and prophets and other teaching and equipping ministries were to share the responsibility and the power to overcome spiritual darkness with all believers. Paul, Peter, James, John, and other writers teach that principle of growing in faith and grace, and that as living stones of a spiritual temple we can live in the power of the Holy Spirit. We can understand the Holy Spirit’s work, pray for God’s guidance, exercise spiritual authority, and live in unity and peace. And we learn to use spiritual gifts to serve each other and to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus through God's word and the Holy Spirit’s discipleship of our lives.

I mentioned earlier that Caesarea Philippi, which was a place of idolatry and avoided by law-abiding Jews, was where Jesus declared, "I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This location housed a shrine to the pagan god Pan in a vast cave of a hillside, and it was believed to be a " gate to Hades " (a gate of hell). It was here where shameful fertility rituals were performed (1 Chronicles 5:25), and the declaration of Jesus at this "gate of hell" that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church, signified that through his power and guided by his Spirit we would overcome the powers of darkness.

From the beginning, the gates of hell have not had to attack the Church (gates don’t attack anything) but to do nothing other than simply keep people imprisoned in darkness and in unnecessary inner suffering. Human protests or moral judgments can't unlock these gates—only Divine power can. And Christians can use the keys of the Kingdom to free captives from that imprisonment. Today, many in this world live in despair, loneliness, broken relationships, resentment, and fear, needing hope and love and faith. They need God. Paul in Ephesians reminds us that we too once lived behind these gates and were influenced by the world and its ways and separated from God (Ephesians 2:2).
After telling the disciples that he would give them the keys of the Kingdom Jesus also says, ‘and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’
Jesus had come to the earth to loose the binding of Israel to the law and it was to be loosed in Heaven. He had come to the earth to bind humanity to his grace and truth and it would be bound by grace and truth in Heaven.
There are many opinions and interpretations of what is meant by binding and loosing (people bind all sorts of things), but we see in the Book of Acts and in the epistles about the early days of the Church community where these binding and loosing principles were effectively put into operation. The new freedom of being bonded to the Kingdom order of love and faith and grace brought new responsibilities for the care of the poor and weak and vulnerable in the community of faith. Being previously bound by the Jewish law for many of these people meant that they would have been shunned from the temple and all forms of worship and blessing because of being diseased or disfigured or disabled. But now this new and true freedom of grace also called for more sacrificial love from the privileged and influential believers to release the abundant spiritual blessing for everyone in that redeemed community. God’s vision for his new community of faith was for humanity to be his family in the earth being nurtured and provided for by a loving Father in Heaven.

And Jesus, who sees us as his brothers and sisters in his Father’s family says those same words about binding and loosing in only one other place in the Bible, in Matthew 18:15-18. Here he appeals to us to resolve offences and conflicts with each another in a Godly way and become reconciled. He warns that unless someone is willing to listen to what the other party has to say and be willing to forgive if they have been offended, or to ask for forgiveness if they have caused an offence, they will be considered as an outsider to the whole community. As brothers and sisters together in his family we are bound to live in this way, but nobody can be forced to. He is teaching us here that if we live in unforgiveness we create a prison of unhappiness and isolation for ourselves.
However, through that isolation and through the prayer of others and as God acts upon that person’s spirit, they may have a change of heart and be loosed from that miserable prison. So Jesus concludes by saying ‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ In other words, if we do things his way on earth he backs what we do from heaven.

Jesus has set forth a vision for his Church in the things that he said to his disciples on that day in Caesarea Philippi. He envisioned multitudes of robust and diverse local communities of people receiving revelation from God and living in the unity of the Spirit, touching the hearts and minds of those who are still living behind the gates of spiritual darkness and being influenced by the world and its ways and separated from God (Ephesians 2:2).
Wherever there are people whose lives live out of the Kingdom keys of love and faith and truth and who are willing to prayerfully go in where the pain and suffering is, the gates of hell will fly open and people will be set free to hear words of life and not of death. As the apostle Peter wrote, they will become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through wrong desires. (2Peter 1:4). Rock of Ages cleft for me let me hide myself in Thee. Amen.

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GOSPELS 14 BLOOD COVENANT

In Gospels 14 we will continue in the Bread narrative that we looked at in Gospels 13 in the Gospel of John and Chapter six where Jesus said that he was the Bread of Life. And just as we eat bread and take bread into ourselves to sustain and energise our natural life, we take the Spiritual life of Jesus into us by faith through the Holy Spirit, to sustain and energise our inner spiritual life together with God. This inner spiritual life was made available to humanity after Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Jesus continues in John Chapter six, saying he was the Bread of Life from Heaven, and the crowd fiercely resisted him and everything he was saying.
John 6:41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
They could only see the natural man Jesus whom they knew, and they knew his mother Mary, and his father Joseph, who was a local carpenter. Jesus then tells them to stop grumbling and resisting, and in the next nine verses he says three times that he is the bread of life that has come from Heaven to give us this bread of life as the spiritual energy that sustains our inner spiritual life.
It was obvious that they were not going to accept what he was saying but instead of softening the message Jesus knew he had to frame his words even more strongly, and the third time he mentions the bread of life he also makes another startling statement. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:51).
The word for flesh (sarx) is a lot stronger than the word for body (soma). The body is thought of generally as the outer embodiment of the whole being, whereas the flesh is the body with all the inner viscera. He said to them ‘As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me (John 6:57)
And that difficult statement is followed up by Jesus making an even stronger statement; ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’.

That was just too ‘eye-rollingly’ much for them, especially because he was not saying this up on some hillside – he said this in the synagogue in Capernaum. The people began rowdily disputing with one another and with him about everything he was saying. Jesus knew in his heart that many of his own disciples were also offended, and most of the people there had totally rejected the idea that he had come from Heaven, so he asked his disciples what they would think if they actually saw him ascending back up to Heaven where he first came from. They had no answer.
Jesus then says ‘the flesh profits nothing’ (John 6:63) which means that only the Holy Spirit could one day give them understanding of his eternal life that he was offering to them and to all of humanity, and that all human physical or intellectual effort to obtain that inner life was futile. The Holy Spirit was poured out on all of humanity afterwards on the day of Pentecost and Jesus was to call this ‘The Promise of the Father’ (Acts 1:4). Within that Promise comes the unfolding of how the Father draws people to Jesus, and explains what Jesus meant when he then said ‘no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’(John 6:65). The Father grants that promised invitation to all Mankind, but not all accept.

Many of his own disciples and many others in the crowd decided to stop following him after saying all that left him. John writes that he turned to the twelve disciples and said, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)

All the other Gospel writers have Jesus saying that the bread was his body (soma) and that the cup was the blood of the New Covenant, (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19) but none of them went as far as to say like John, that unless we ate his flesh (sarx not soma) and drank his blood that we could not have his life within us. The picture of Jesus being the bread from Heaven for them to eat might have been cringeworthy for them to hear, but being now told that they had to actually eat his flesh and drink his blood was utterly disgusting, so no wonder most of the people walked away. But only John could have come up with this illustration. Afterall it was in John‘s Gospel that John the Baptist gave us the same picture when he saw Jesus and said Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

That picture is the one of Israel eating the Passover Lamb from the very first Passover feast when God rescued them from the tyranny of Pharoah in Egypt, and every Passover since then Jewish families would gather together (and still do) to divide the pieces of a slaughtered Lamb to eat as the Passover sacrifice, and they were commanded to eat it entirely. That was not disgusting – that was the most holy and precious and memorable landmark of their history and was the central core of their belief as being the people of God in the Old Testament. And that had always been God’s big idea about Father God sending his Son to the earth to become not only the Passover Lamb for Israel but also to be the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the whole world.
In the Book of Leviticus the ongoing eating of the flesh of the daily sacrificial animals is described in all the gory details about which parts of the animal and its entrails were to be eaten by the priests and which parts burnt up (Leviticus 7). The whole chapter goes into great detail about these sacrifices and who was to eat them and how certain obviously inedible parts were to be burnt up. It states that this ‘flesh’ of the slaughtered animal was to be the total provision of food for the priests and their families. The momentous historical and spiritual reality of all of this was that the spilled blood had to be put into bowls and even scraped up off the earth and be ceremoniously burnt upon the altar of sacrifice and go up in smoke to Heaven.

That is why it is so significant that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper Passover feast with his disciples and ate the flesh of the lamb before he was arrested and went and shed his blood as our Passover Lamb. Paul writes to us in 1Corinthians how he received a revelation from the Lord about what happened on that Passover night so that Christians could live out that spiritual reality by faith, about the Lamb of God being slain for us before the foundation of the world. ‘and when he had given thanks, he broke the bread and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1Corintians 11:23)
Jesus has just there described the New ‘Blood Covenant’. The Old Covenant agreements were also called ‘blood Covenants’ and sealed with blood, and the Bible says that the life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:14). The Old Testament reality was that people staked their lives on blood covenants or agreements. People ask ‘why should we read the Old Testament? Because three and a half thousand years of blood covenant life has been indelibly carved into history - a story so brilliantly designed that it cannot be denied and could not be devised by mortal means. So what does a person do with that? you stake your life on it. We know that Israel were forbidden to ever drink blood, and that had become the main offence when Jesus spoke to the people about eating his body and drinking his blood. Jesus was to stake his life for all of mankind and give us his life by offering up his own blood on the sacrificial altar of fire of the cross at Golgotha–– where a new Blood Covenant with humanity was established – his life for us, his life in us, our life for him, and our life with him.
Then Jesus rose from the dead after he had descended into hell for three days and he emerged from the tomb and was met by Mary Magdalene, who wanted to greet him, but he said to her. “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father... (John 20.27)
And just as the Old testament sacrificial lifeblood on the altar of fire ascended into heaven Jesus was now granting his lifeblood to ascend into heaven and be offered to his Father for the whole earth for all time, as the Scripture says, Hebrews 9:11 TLB. He came as High Priest of this better Covenant that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world, and once for all took blood into that inner room, the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it on the mercy seat; but it was not the blood of goats and calves. No, he took his own blood, and with it he, by himself, made sure of our eternal salvation.

It is done, and at communion time we remember the love behind that sacrifice of the Father in sending his Son whose sacrifice gives his own life and being to us. Jesus staked his life on that and he says what about you. He says I’ve given you my life can you give me yours. This is not just about a life in heaven one day it is about a heavenly life today. Our lives and his life become one life together with the Father and the Holy Spirit and they become one life together for us with each other in the spirit of that New Life. A gory story that is full of glory. Believe and live.

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GOSPELS 13 THE BREAD OF LIFE

Today we are continuing in the story of the feeding of the five thousand and the disciples rowing across the lake and finally arriving at the other side at Capernaum. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and John we looked at the stories of Jesus walking on the sea and we saw the different points of emphasis that the writers had about what happened when Jesus entered the boat. But in Mark’s Gospel there is another point of emphasis about getting into the boat that is not mentioned in the other Gospels, and it is about the bread that was miraculously multiplied to feed the crowd. Mark writes ‘And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves of bread, but their hearts were hardened’. (Mark 6:51)
So what did they not understand about the bread and what has this to do with their hearts being hardened?

The Greek word for understand here is syniemi which means putting two ideas together in the right way. It means having the right perception of the thing that is perceived – is there something more to what I just saw? Was there something more to what Jesus did with the bread that just solving the economic food supply problem in the Middle East, and was this the way things were going to be from now on? Or was there some radical deeper idea here just as there was to all that Jesus had been doing and saying since they first met him?

The answer is yes, this was another radical reality that Jesus was gradually unfolding in everything that had to do with the mention of and the meaning of bread. And we will look at this now and also look at the matter of their hearts being hardened a little further on.

The story about God’s provision of bread for us began in Gospels 9 when Jesus taught the disciples the ‘Our Father ‘which mentioned the request of give us this day our daily bread. He enlarged upon the idea of the prayer for provision of bread in Gospels10 when he said So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing… and live in surrendered togetherness with God, and all these things shall be added to you. Then in Gospels 11 Jesus not only expanded on the idea of provision of bread but put the idea into action by performing the miracle of the loaves and fishes. And now in Gospels 13 Jesus is expanding the idea of the miraculous provision of bread to its ultimate spiritual fulfilment by declaring that he is the Bread of Life, and we will unfold the perceptions of the people about what he was saying. The story continues with the crowd at Bethsaida following Jesus to the other side of the lake the day after the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.

John 6:22 The next morning, back across the lake, crowds began gathering on the shore waiting to see Jesus. For they knew that he and his disciples had come over together and that the disciples had gone off in their boat, leaving him behind. Several small boats from Tiberias were nearby, so when the people saw that Jesus wasn’t there, nor his disciples, they got into the boats and went across to Capernaum to look for him.
When they arrived and found him, they said, “Rabbi, how did you get here?” Jesus replied, “The truth of the matter is that you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you believe in me. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

Jesus knew that no one saw the miracle of the bread the way he wanted them to see it (and us as well). They were only interested in seeing miracles of bread being multiplied. Jesus asked them to believe in him because that is all he wanted them to do, but they demanded more signs, they wanted to have more bread miracles. And they obviously wanted them on a daily basis because they said that Moses gave their fathers the Manna bread from heaven every day for forty years in the wilderness.
They said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, You must show us more miracles if you want us to believe you are the Messiah. Give us free bread every day, like our fathers had while they journeyed through the wilderness! As the Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from heaven.’” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
They said to him, “Master, keep giving us this bread.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me… Then Jesus says to them a few verses later. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Let us now look at what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples that their hearts were hardened. They had perceived the bread miracle but what did they believe about the bread miracle? How did the seeing and believing come together. Seeing is not all there is to believing – believing is believing – faith and believing is knowing beyond the seeing.
They saw that for Israel eating bread was what gave them the energy for the sustaining of their natural lives, but what they did not see beyond that was that Jesus was giving them himself, the Bread of Life. This Bread would be the spiritual energy for the sustaining of their inner lives – eternal life. What the mind perceives is what the heart believes, and it would take faith for them to perceive in their minds and believe in their hearts the power of this truth about that inner spiritual energy. But a hard heart cannot believe, and he knew that their hearts had become hardened as do all human hearts, because of the perplexities and hurts and disappointments of life. This was not a condemnation of them because there was a Scripture in the Old Testament that promised that God would one day give people a new heart, a soft heart. ‘And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit within you, and bring forth in you (asa) the acting out (yalak) of my decrees (hoq) and to take heed and attend to (samar) all that I say to you (mispat) (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
That promise would only be made good by God in the New Testament when Jesus would come and give his life for us on the cross and be raised up again from the dead and then send the Holy Spirit for humanity to receive that new heart, a soft heart that could believe in the spiritual energy of his life within us as the Bread of Life. The Bible says that our faith is not our own but a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8) and that comes when you ask God to give you the Holy Spirit who energises faith within us – ask now! The Holy Spirit is actually working in every human being on the planet to break down our resistance to living that life of faith in Jesus. We can receive the Holy Spirit and believe.

Jesus had just said that he had come to do the will of his Father and the way he did that was he would hear his Father speak to him and then step forward into the doing of what he heard, and the Father would do the supernatural work from Heaven. Jesus was spiritually at rest in his soul when he did this, and this act of faith actually energised him. Jesus had said a little earlier ‘My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. (John 4:33).
He is now saying that he is our bread, our spiritual food that energises us. When we know that Jesus lives within us to continue doing the work of the Father through us by the Holy Spirit we can be at rest in our souls and be fed with that heavenly energy. This is the answer to the question that they asked Jesus when they said “What must we do, to be doing the work of God?” and Jesus said ‘this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’. This rest of faith is what happens when we can be still in the presence of God and ask Jesus to speak to us when he chooses to, through his word and through the Holy Spirit. We can be assured that we will hear and we can then step into the doing of that. This is allowing Jesus to be the bread of Life to us – the food that sustains us, spirit soul and body. Amen.

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GOSPELS 12 JESUS WALKS ON THE SEA John 6 Matthew 14 Mark 6
When we come to the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand which was included in all the four Gospels, we see that the crowd wanted to make Jesus their king… ‘Jesus saw that they were ready to take him by force and make him their king, so he went higher into the mountains alone to pray’( John 6:15). And in the Gospels of John and Matthew and Mark Jesus tells his disciple to row back to another part of the seacoast of Galilee. The story goes on to tell us of the disciples rowing against the wind in a storm-tossed sea while Jesus is praying up on a mountain and Mark includes that Jesus was watching them as they rowed, He saw that they were in serious trouble, rowing hard and struggling against the wind and waves. (Mark 6:48)
The story then tells of Jesus walking upon the sea to join them in their boat for the rest of the journey, and each Gospel talks of their fear of the storm and their even greater fear when Jesus appears walking on the water towards them like a ghost or some apparition.

Some details are included in one Gospel and left out in another but that does not mean the details are ‘either/or’ because the details are ‘both/and’.
Matthew’s Gospel includes the miraculous story of Peter asking Jesus if he could walk on the sea to meet him. (Matthew 14:27).
And John’s Gospel talks about the miraculous incident of how the boat instantly arrives at their destination in Capernaum the moment that the disciples welcome Jesus on board their boat.

According to Luke the feeding of the five thousand was at Bethsaida on the northeastern side of the Lake of Galilee (Luke 9:10) and they were told to row to Capernaum on the northwestern side of the lake (John 6:16), and they would have been about halfway to Capernaum, when Jesus came to them walking on the sea.

The story about Peter walking on water is in Matthew and I’m reading from Ch. 14
Jesus came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him, they were terrified “It’s a ghost!” they said, crying out in terror. But Jesus was quick to comfort them. “Have courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.” Peter, suddenly bold, said, “Master, if it’s really you, call me to come to you on the water.”
Jesus said, “Come ahead.” Jumping out of the boat, Peter walked on the water to Jesus. But when he looked down at the waves churning beneath his feet, he lost his nerve and started to sink. He cried, “Master, save me!” Jesus didn’t hesitate. He reached down and grabbed his hand. Then he said, “such little faith, why did you doubt?” The two of them climbed into the boat, and the wind died down.
This story has a particular message about faith for us - and the personal message of faith for Peter was prophetic of so much of Peter’s impetuous boasts of how great his faith was, only to find it sinking and having Jesus lift him into faith again.
Jesus had told Peter at the Last Supper before his trial that Peter would deny him three times but that he would be praying for his faith to not fail. Peter boasted that he would die before he would ever forsake Jesus, and very soon afterwards when Jesus was arrested to be put on trial, Peter denied Jesus three times telling people he didn’t even know him. Peter’s boast of faith and denial was another trial of Peter’s sinking and being helped up again into faith.
But Peter received a new kind of faith after Pentecost when he became free from being under the law as a Jew and now knew that salvation was only through faith in Christ. However, when he was told by God to preach the Gospel to a Gentile Centurion named Cornelius, Peter’s faith sank again as he wasn’t convinced that Gentiles could be saved. But Peter obediently preached to Cornelius and his family, after letting Cornelius know that it wasn’t lawful for him as a Jew to even come into his house. God helped Peter’s faith up again and Cornelius and his family all received Jesus and were baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit. Fourteen years later Paul had to rebuke Peter openly before all the apostles in Jerusalem for separating himself from the Gentile Christians in Antioch and refusing to eat with them, and this became another lesson of sinking faith for Peter who eventually did become a champion of faith like Paul.

This is also a message for our faith, which may fail and sink, and we learn that only Jesus can complete our faith with his faith. The Bible says that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebews12) and in being the finisher of our faith he completes the faith that we offer to him in our prayers of trust and obedience to him. We believe as best we can, and Jesus takes our faith and completes it and presents that faith to the Father who fulfills our surrendered prayer with his good will and Divine purpose for us.

We now look at the miraculous incident in John’s Gospel of how the boat instantly arrives at their destination in Capernaum when Jesus gets in the boat; ‘when suddenly they saw Jesus walking toward the boat they were terrified, but he called out to them and told them not to be afraid. When they were willing to let him in, they suddenly arrived at their destination in an instant! (John 6:20) The weary disciples welcoming Jesus into their boat allowed Jesus to miraculously complete their journey. God does this for us personally in our own journeys of faith with him, especially when we have been faithfully and obediently doing the rowing which means doing what we have heard him say to us and then he comes into our boat and complete that journey.
And there is also a picture here of his church family - all of us rowing in the boat together in toiling for two thousand years and the Church getting as far as it has in that time. But there is a greater destination that Father God has for his beloved family and there will be a time when Jesus will come to us in the boat in the midst of the storm and the darkness and he will bring us into the promise that he has for his people, his destination for his Church, which is.
‘till we all come into the unity of the faith, unto a perfect (complete) man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13).
What this means is that all God’s people will have the one faith, not the same dogmatic doctrine but the same Jesus on display (or being glorified) in our lives, not as a powerful organisation of this world but as a reflection of the likeness of God – a people of togetherness with God and one another in love and truth and agreement with his will on earth, as it is in Heaven. Only Jesus and the lifegiving Logos Word of his power can complete this measure of faith for each single one of us and also corporately for all of us together as the Body of Christ, to come into that promise. His boat - his Church family, will become an Ark of refuge in the midst of the storms and trouble that surrounds us in these times, as when Noah’s family was made safe from the flood and the darkness - and the storm ceased, and the flood subsided.

(Luke 17:23 – As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man).

We are living in times when the darkness could not get much darker and the storm does not get much fiercer, but Jesus has been watching us rowing from his mountain top Heavenly place of prayer as our intercessor and planning to come into our boat and take us to our destination (Romans 9:28). Things are happening in history that Jesus prophesied about that could signal a beginning of the times of great trial upon the earth before he returns. When the disciples asked Jesus what things will happen at the times of the end, he replied that concerning his people Israel, they would be hated by all nations for his name’s sake (Matthew 24:9). The times of fulfillment of that statement and of other things that he mentioned in that chapter are beyond our power to understand, let alone predict. Only the Father has these times in his hands and knows how his Kingdom in Heaven and on earth will come together through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

But when the Father sees the suffering of his children on the earth, his love and compassion for the people will draw people to his Son and they will come running, coming from places that we would not have considered or imagined, and they will want to know about God. They may look like they couldn’t fit in, with strange ways and beliefs that don’t belong. But God will say they do belong and that he will change their beliefs and their ways. And Isaiah prophesies this along with his other prophesies for Israel that are also for the Church and our personal lives.
‘Peoples unknown to you will come running to you, because I, the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel have caused you to put God on display in your lives (made you glorious).” Seek the LORD while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the LORD that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will mercifully forgive’. (Isaiah 55:5-7)

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GOSPELS 11 FEEDING THE FIVE THOUSAND

Matthew Mark Luke and John all have the same account of the feeding of the five thousand with the five loaves and two fishes, and this account is placed early in the ministry of Jesus. Luke and Mark place the event just after Jesus had sent the twelve apostles out to preach the Kingdom of God and they had come back with a good report. Mathew Mark and Luke also place this account around the time of John the Baptist being beheaded by Herod. I will read from the Gospel of John today.
John 6:1 After this, Jesus crossed over the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. And a huge crowd, many of them foreign pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for the annual Passover celebration, were following him wherever he went, to watch him heal the sick. So when Jesus went up into the hills and sat down with his disciples around him, he soon saw a great multitude of people climbing the hill, looking for him.
Turning to Philip he asked, “Philip, where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.
Philip replied, “It would take a fortune to begin to do it!”
Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a youngster here with five barley loaves and a couple of fish! But what good is that with all this mob?”
“Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus ordered. And all of them—the approximate count was five thousand—sat down on the grassy slopes. Then Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks to God and passed them out to the people. Afterwards he did the same with the fish. And everyone ate until full! “Now gather the scraps,” Jesus told his disciples, “So that nothing is wasted.” And twelve baskets were filled with the leftovers!
When the people realized what a great miracle had happened, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” Jesus saw that they were ready to march him off to make him their king, so he went higher into the mountains alone. All still wanting an earthly Kingdom.

What we see happening in sequence here is that Jesus has been proclaiming and embodying the Kingdom of God which was not of this world, and he had taught them about praying to his Father as Our Father. He had then gone on to tell them of how our Father answers us in his extravagant promise of providing for all of our basic needs and entreating us to not be anxious about them - what to eat or to wear or to have, or whatever the world gets anxious about and fights about and cheats about.

It would follow on then that this extraordinary miracle of feeding five thousand people occurs. It is as if his Father was saying, ‘well you have told them what I would do as their Father in providing for them and not to get anxious about it, so now let’s do it’. wonder
It would have been enough if that was all there was to it, because that miracle held so much other promise than its extraordinary wonder that ranks with many other mighty unforgettable miracles in the Old Testament, such as crossing the Red sea after coming out of Egypt, and being fed with the manna from Heaven in the wilderness, and receiving the water from the rock. And here in the New Testament we had seen the turning of water into wine and the raising of Peter’s mother-in-law from the dead, and countless healings and still yet to come would be the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and above and beyond anything and everything is his own Resurrection from the dead and his ascension into Heaven.

But the feeding of the five thousand also invites us to see beyond the wonder and sensation of the miracle itself and to observe the compassion of Jesus for the foreign pilgrims and the poor and the outcasts in the crowd that followed him. So many of them had become resigned to being stretched beyond their means and going without basic needs. Then we also see something else, that while God the Father is the source of this miraculous food that really comes from Heaven, it appeared at first to come from a young boy who just happened to bring his own lunch. This teaches us that we can never predict what or who God will use to be a channel of God’s miraculous supply for our need.
Then there is also the fact that the abundance of food left over had to be gathered up after everyone had eaten and put into twelve baskets. This speaks of more than just being diligent about not leaving litter lying around, and it also speaks of more than just God's abundance and generosity. Jesus wanted these twelve basketsful of food to be given to those in need who were perhaps back at home or the outsiders who were unable to be there for the miracle and would have gone without. God wants to multiply his generosity.
The gathering of the leftover food in the baskets can be compared to the way God commanded the people of Israel to always leave the leftover gleanings of their crop harvests that he had generously blessed to be gathered by the foreigners and strangers among the people of Israel. God wants to bless the outsiders, the people on the fringe. The Scripture says,

Leviticus 23:22 (ESV) “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its fringe, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner:
The theme of this gracious blessing of the gleanings is actually the theme of the story in the Book of Ruth about Ruth who was a foreigner in Israel, and outsider. She was the daughter in law of Naomi whose son had died and left Ruth as a widow in Naomi’s family household. Ruth had chosen to make Naomi’s people her people, but was still classified as an outsider, but Boaz, a near kinsman of Naomi arranged for Ruth to be allowed to gather up and to keep the gleanings of his harvest for herself. This act of his love and favour for her, in the design and purpose of God results in Ruth marrying Boaz and becoming the great grandmother of king David in the family tree of Jesus, recorded in the genealogy in Matthew 1:5-6, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah of the root of David. (Revelation 5:5)

Ruth is immortalised in Scripture as a story of redemption for a woman who had lost her hopes and dreams for a future and of then being given a place of belonging and being appreciated and remembered. God has a way of showing all of us that we are never forgotten, and we always belong to him, and we can choose to trust him in his placement of us in our times and circumstances. God’s creative design and purpose of redemption of so many things for us in our lives goes supernaturally beyond any human plan or circumstance that we could ever contrive.
The young boy that gave his lunch of five loaves and two fishes was also immortalised and never forgotten and appreciated beyond what he would ever have imagined. So remember to thank him and show your appreciation when you meet him in Heaven. He’ll be standing over on the left as you go in, next to the Good Samaritan.

We have seen how God multiplied material blessing in the Old Testament, but God wants to show us how in the New Testament he not only provides material blessing, but he gives to us all spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:4). These include God’s love and his joy and peace and the spiritual gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit that become passed on and multiplied, making us a channel of his goodness in our caring and serving of others, especially those who might feel like outsiders and left out. That can be seen as our spiritual loaves and fishes being taken and blessed and multiplied by Jesus that brings thanksgiving to God who is the source of these blessings in our lives. Amen.

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GOSPELS 10 YOUR KINGDOM COME

In Gospels 10 we are staying in Matthew Chapter six where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s prayer, and the parallel verses are also in Luke Chapter eleven. But even before he taught the disciples about prayer Jesus had referred to his Father four times as ‘Your Father’ in that section of Scripture, teaching what many called his ‘hard sayings’, the revolutionary teachings that puzzled those who heard them because they seemed impossible to carry out. He spoke about being perfect as ‘your Father’ is perfect and loving your enemies as ‘Your Father’ does, sending his rain on the just and the unjust.

But these puzzling revolutionary statements of Jesus were not said simply for the sake of being a revolutionary. A definite theme of the nature of ‘Our Father’ was emerging that Jesus was declaring. After Jesus taught them The Lord’s prayer, the ‘Our Father’, it starts becoming very clear that the mission of Jesus was to bring about The Way for us all to live together with himself and Our Father and the Holy Spirit in the same way that he was living with his Father and the Holy Spirit at that time. He was talking about the Kingdom of God within him.

The crowds would not stop following Jesus so he would go into a solitary place where he could be still and reflect on what his Father was saying to him, but the crowds would find him and beg him not to leave them, so he said to them, I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places too, for that is why I was sent. (Luke 4:42).
Jesus kept talking about a Kingdom, and people wanted to know what this Kingdom was, especially the religious leaders and the Pharisees – Where was it? – When would it come? – What did it look like? His own disciples also had a secret ambition of them being given a position of honour and glory in that Kingdom someday very soon. No one understood.

Jesus’ answer to them all was that His Kingdom was not in a geographical place, and you couldn’t plan its arrival with a calendar or describe its outward appearance as a visible organization. He said it was not an external system but an internal reality. We read in Luke; ‘When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within (entos – amongst, in the midst of) you. (Luke 17:20 NKJ, ESV.). Jesus was the only human embodiment of that kingdom amongst them or in the midst of them - The Kingdom was within him but not yet within them.

But Jesus is prophesying that this Kingdom would be within them and within us after he had sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

The Kingdom of God is the Father and Son agreement that determined the design and purpose for all of creation in the beginning through the Logos Word of Jesus, with the Holy Spirit being the creative power of that creation.

The promise of the Father was that we would embody that ‘Our Father and Jesus’ life deep inside each one of us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus shared more fully on that in John and in Acts.
Before Jesus ascended into Heaven his disciples asked him one last time if now was when Jesus would establish a material Kingdom to rule over the earth. Jesus realised they still did not understand so he told them that the Father would do all that in his own good time, and he went on to say ‘wait until you receive the promise of the Father, for you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be the living proof (witness) of who I am, in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). He also said to them Because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14: 17. I). He is telling them and us that we would embody the Kingdom of God the way that he had done. While Jesus lived amongst us his Father and Son relationship was the Kingdom of God in the earth expressing what the Father declared in heaven.

We now continue in Matthew chapter six, where a few verses earlier Jesus had just taught his disciples to pray to Our Father, honouring him, and asking him to provide for us our basic human needs and forgiving us for letting him down and guarding us from evil.
He now presents us with the extravagant response of a loving devoted Father who desires to bless us and keep us abundantly more than what we would ever have thought to ask from him.
He says to his disciples,
“So my counsel is: Don’t worry about things—food, drink, and clothes. For you already have life and a body—and they are far more important than what to eat and wear. Look at the birds! They don’t worry about what to eat—they don’t need to sow or reap or store up food—for your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Will all your worries add a single moment to your life?
“And why worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies of the field! They don’t worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you, O men of little faith?
“So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing. Why be like the world which doesn’t know God? For they take pride in all these things and are fearful and anxious about them. But your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, and he will give them to you, so seek first the kingdom of God and live in surrendered togetherness with him, and all these things shall be added to you - give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to. And don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time. (Matthew 6:25-34)
Our Father is entreating us here to trust him beyond what we ever thought we could. The lilies of the field that do not toil are showing us that it is only the creative work of God upon them that brings forth their glory and beauty. They are not an example to us of living a toil free life, but an illustration of everything being how God created it to be. We are to be who we were created to be and do the good things he has planned for us to do, even in the midst of toil and challenge and loss. And God acts supernaturally upon our faithful being and doing and blesses that. He also gives us the spectacular playground of his creation for us to leisurely enjoy, as Adam did in the garden with God. But all of this being and doing takes place within a disordered world of chaos and malevolence – a world where people who do not know God live in fear and anxiety and uncertainty about anything and everything.

Jesus died and rose again to freely give this Kingdom of God to you which is the Father and Son relationship that resides uniquely within each one of us forming and shaping God’s individual design and purpose for each of our lives. We become a locus and a showpiece of where the Kingdom expression of God comes on earth as it is in heaven. The Father’s idea, the Jesus logos word and the activity of the Holy Spirit meets your Yes and we do his good thing as well as we can (Ephesians 2:10). This good thing can be small and ordinary or a significant life changing thing – but it still expresses the Kingdom of God

Jesus set the example for us, to draw aside from time to time from the busyness of life just to enjoy the ‘be still and know that I am God’ times of rest and refreshing for our souls. These setting aside times help us deepen our trust as we wait for God to show us that he is acting in our lives supernaturally for our good, and our trusting expectation of his goodness draws his peace and tranquillity into our hearts. We rest in the assurance of the work of his Kingdom within us that works unceasingly, waiting to be captured by our faith at any given moment in time, where we swap anxiety and frustration for hope and expectation.
Your Kingdom come your will be done. Amen.

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GOSPELS 9 FAMILY

Today I’m doing number nine in the Gospel series and I’m calling today’s word Family. I’m looking in Matthew and Luke, the two longest gospels, where Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer and then teaches them the Lord’s prayer - The ‘Our Father’ – the Father of his family in the earth. The accounts of this are in Matthew chapter six and in Luke chapter 12. Matthew has a bit more detail, so I’ll go there.

Reading in Matthew 6:5 ‘And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, so that people can see them. I’m telling you, they already have their reward. But for you, when you pray, go into your room, and close your door, and pray to your Father privately; and your Father who knows every hidden thing will openly show you afterwards how he has answered you’. This kind of prayer works.
Jesus had criticised the show off Pharisees for good reason because they looked good on the outside but all they had on the inside were big egos. He called them hypocrites which means actors. Their prayers weren’t for people’s needs but instead were their opinions of how holy they were. So the first lesson from Jesus was don’t pray for show because you’re just putting your ego on display and not God. And then he gave them that radical prayer alternative. The earliest things that he did and said were radically radical, if you can make such a statement. He uncovered their religious hypocrisy and exposed their religious power plays and started a spiritual revolution and he never let up and in the end, they killed him for it. And Jesus is still speaking and leading that revolution from Heaven today if we want to listen.
I want to unpack that radical prayer ‘Go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father privately about all the inner private things that are going on inside of you, the emotions the anxieties the hopes and dreams the threats and fears and the questions - all those questions all those uncertainties. And then he says - and your Father who knows every private hidden thing about you will listen to you - and what you need to hear or to see or to understand will be made clear and stare you in the face if you keep your antenna up.’
The antenna of your togetherness with God that is always there for us.

This was radical for those disciples to hear for several reasons, as it is for us.
It was radical firstly because no one in all of Israel approached God as being their personal father - It was unheard of. But Jesus said that God was his personal Father all the time – he said he was the Son of God and he said I and the Father are one – and he also said that he only did what he heard the Father say, and that is what drove the Pharisees mad. Jesus said it because it was true, and Jesus wasn’t mad, and he wasn’t a liar.
The disciples would have heard him saying that a lot and they would have believed it because of all the wisdom that he spoke and all of the amazing miracles he performed. But why did Jesus say to them ‘pray to Your Father? ‘Why didn’t Jesus just tell them to pray to his Father because they would certainly have understood that. But he said to the disciples ‘Your Father.’ What was Jesus saying?
And here’s the second radical thing. Jesus was inviting them to become part of the God family with the Father and himself and the Holy Spirit. He wanted them all to become brothers and sisters with him as their big brother. This is why he said ‘Pray to your Father’
This was the Father’s idea from the beginning, and this is why he sent Jesus to us and to give his Holy spirit to each one of us so that we would know we can become part of his family. This had never been said before - never even been thought of before. That’s why I’m calling today’s word Family – It’s like God 1.01 his big idea. Church should be more like this instead of being like an institution.

He then goes on to teach them the ‘Our Father’ prayer, not just a ‘his Father,’ prayer, but the Our Father prayer. The ‘Our Father’ is not a religious prayer ritual to be said in a pious voice in sombre tones as if the more pious you sound the more spiritual you are. That is missing the point of God’s idea of who you are and who he is and what you mean to him as his child in his family.
God is all about family. He started the idea. Why does it get forgotten? It’s probably because many church people have tended to talk about church rules and religion rather than loving and caring relationships.
I was taught in my early years in the catechism the answer to the question ‘Why did God make us? The answer was ‘To know, love, and serve God in this life and to be with him forever in the next. Amen.’ And most Christians agree with that statement, but some think the emphasis is all about being a servant more than anything else. Its not about God wanting more servants.

let’s look at that for a moment – ‘To know and to love and to serve’. That is a beautiful thing to understand. So how many people do you know, how many people do you love and how many people do you serve in your life? I would say there are many. First. You can’t know someone if you don’t relate to them. And you can’t love them if you don’t know them.
I am not saying that knowing someone is loving them, but it starts there and when the relationship has qualities like acceptance and friendship, you’re on the spectrum of liking and loving. And that could be on a range from say one to a hundred.
And I’m not saying that liking and loving someone means you have to serve them. But what does serving them mean?
It means that somewhere on a serving spectrum on a range of one to a hundred again you might want to just ‘be there’ for them in one way or another. And being there for someone means you are actually serving them. Just think of some of the ways you could do that and are doing that.

And it is good for everybody if that’s always a two-way thing. from God’s point of view he is committed to knowing and loving and serving us and he understands how difficult it is for us as his children (In our humanity) to be that way for him. loving parents have that same heart for their children They try to be there for their children giving them the best that they’ve got so their children can be the best that they can be. But God doesn’t say if you are not going to be there for me I’m going to punish you and make you suffer. No - he says if you do want to know me and love me and be there for me you will live a fulfilled and meaningful life and you will make the world a better and happier place. If you choose to not live that way you will find you just end up causing yourself unnecessary suffering anyway.

So the way I see us as being in the God Family with the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is that we can see God the Father as a devoted parent who has given us Jesus as our older brother who is dedicated to us. He has laid down his life for us so we can have his life within us and have the same faith and trust in his Father that he has. And we can see the Holy Spirit as the one who touches our hearts so we can know God and love and serve one another. That is the best kind of life there is on this earth. So Jesus tells his disciples about how Our Father wants to ‘be there’ for all of us in the Lord’s Prayer. I will pray it from Matthew’s Gospel and then I will pray it how I hear the Holy Spirit speaks to me in the Our Father prayer.

Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Our Father living in heaven you have the most exceptional and unique name, God.

We want your way of commanding everything in the universe to play out here on earth as it does in Heaven.

Please keep looking after our basic human needs every day.

And forgive us for letting you down the way we do, just as we can forgive others who let us down, often without meaning to

And keep us from the trap of always wanting to have what we want when we want it.

Guard us from the powers of darkness

For You are in majestic command of everything in the Universe with limitless power, and you give to us a stunning display of design and beauty in your creation now and through out all the ages. Amen

When we pray to God we can pray with hope and expectation that he can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He is devoted and dedicated to that.

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GOSPELS 8 LIVING WATER

We have been going through the four Gospels attempting to put together a consistent account of the early ministry of Jesus. But some of the early chapters of John tell us things that the other Gospels do not mention, such as the wedding feast at Cana in Chapter two and today in Chapter four we will look at the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well.

John 4: 1 Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed (although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptizing). They remarked openly that Jesus was ahead, which in the eyes of the people turned Jesus and John into rivals. So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee and he needed to go through Samaria.

Jesus purposefully travelled through Samaria on his way back to northern Galilee from the Judean countryside which was unusual for a Jew because they did not want to mix with the Samaritans who were ancient religious adversaries – So Jews always took the longer route to the west by the Jordan river instead of going over the steep slope of Mount Gerizim in Samaria. But Jesus was being led by the Holy Spirit and was on a mission from the Father to reveal who he was to the Samaritan people, (and that was prophetic of his mission to all the world).
The Samaritans believed that they were the true religion of ancient Israel, because when Israel first came into the promised Land from the wilderness Joshua set up the tabernacle of Moses on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. and some of the tribes of Israel chose to settle there and chose the first five books of the Bible, the Torah as their only Scriptures. They did not follow Joshua and the rest of Israel into the other regions of the Promised Land and they did not experience the era of the Kings and prophets and Psalms and the other Scriptures. They believed that Israel had tampered with their Scriptures and this had caused the lasting enmity between the Samaritans and Israel who had decided to not talk together or to eat and drink together.

So now we find Jesus sitting by Jacob’s well in the Samaritan village of Sychar, about noontime, tired from his long walk, and his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food for lunch. A Samaritan woman then arrived at the well about noon as well which was unusual because Samaritan women did not go and get water in the heat of the day but waited till the late afternoon. But this woman always avoided any awkward encounters with the other women of the village because of the shame and disgrace that she felt about her personal life, so she had bypassed the other wells closer to the village just to be sure. But Jesus is sitting there at the well. She sums up the situation and thinks ‘this man will not give me any trouble – He is a Jew and I am a Samaritan, so he won’t have anything to do with me’. And Jesus asked her if she would please give him a drink (Vs.8). But she said to Jesus, Vs.9“You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” This request of Jesus posed a problem - A Jewish man and a Samaritan woman of ill repute alone, and he asks her for water. Jews and Samaritans don’t associate with each other – especially regarding drinking vessels.

But Jesus was there as the bringer and giver of divine life, and it didn’t matter what ethnic or religious or social barrier was in the way. He gets straight to the point. Vs.10“If you only knew the gift that God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” The word for living water he uses (zao hydor) comes from the word Zoe, Spiritual life not bios, Earthly life.

The woman didn’t get the point – she was looking at the natural resources like ropes and buckets, that she thought were needed here and Jesus didn’t seem to have them, and she thought his words were empty, so she said. “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket, and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? (Vs.11) She was yet to learn that Jesus doesn’t need the natural resources that we think are necessary to have the needs of our soul met. He does things supernaturally. She made the two typical errors when it comes to receiving from Jesus. She thought he was not able to help her with the needs of her soul, and she thought he wouldn’t have been eager to do so.

She continues to doubt and discount anything of value that Jesus might have had for her. She thinks that Jacob’s well (her traditional religion) that Jesus was sitting on was far more effective for her inner life than whatever Jesus had to offer. She says do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?” VS.12. But Jesus replied ‘Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. 14But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.’ (Vs.13-14)

Jesus knew that what this woman had been doing all her life in trying to find satisfaction for her soul in wrong relationships which had always ended up leaving her empty and even more dissatisfied.
Jesus knew that this woman’s soul had told her that those relationships were the thing she needed to make her happy, but Jesus knew her needs were greater and deeper than that. He wanted to give her spiritual contentment and fulfillment instead of forsakenness - He wanted to heal her soul. She had been feeling lost within herself, inadequate, and most likely mistreated by men and unfairly dealt with, lacking love, lonely, and confused and insecure. Jesus wanted to change all of that and help her to trust in him for God’s compassion and the healing power of love and mercy and forgiveness to work in her life. She takes one step closer towards trusting him.

5“Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.” She is still not quite sure how this is all going to work out. David in the Psalms had also cried out to God because of the emotional thirst of his soul, remembering his own shameful past behavior, and longing for living water from God as this woman had, ‘As the deer thirsts for the water so my soul thirsts after you O God. (Psalm 42:1).

Jesus knows that this woman needs to see God at work in her life and The Holy Spirit tells him what to say next. 16“Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her. 17“I don’t have a husband,” the woman replied.18. Jesus said, “You’re right! You don’t have a husband—18for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!”
Jesus tells her about the true state of her life, not to judge her but to show her that she is significant to God as a person, and that he cares about the details of her life. She realizes that God must be in this somehow.

19“Sir,” the woman said, “you must be a prophet.” But finding that she had gotten out of her safety comfort zone she switches the conversation to religion, and she tries to instruct Jesus about what true worship is. She says Our fathers worshiped on this mountain (Gerazim), but you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” (So there!)

Jesus then gives her a beautiful revelation of what true worship really is.
Woman, believe me - it’s not where we worship that counts, but how we worship—is our worship spiritual and real? Do we have the Holy Spirit’s help? For God is Spirit, and The Father wants this kind of worship from us. But you Samaritans know so little about worshiping him, while we Jews know about him, for salvation comes to the world through the Jews.”.
She was not yet aware that he was the Jew through whom salvation and true worship of the Spirit would come - through his death and resurrection, but she had been listening and she then says. “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Jesus then says. “I am Christ, The Messiah”. Once he tells her that she believes and she feels safe. Everything changed for her when she gave to Jesus the command of her life. She even forgot to get any water from the well, leaving her water jar behind and running back into the town to tell everyone what had happened. She had tasted forgiveness and true peace – her shame was covered by mercy, and she felt loved and not forsaken.

Many people are on their own journey of whatever self-help strategies help them to maybe avoid some deeper issues that God wants to help them with. But Jesus will intervene in what looks like some ordinary event. He wants to get our attention and show us that we really need him and to share our life with his. His life is of another dimension to what our natural humanity tries to draw from. He knows we have doubts, and he is patient with us.
Jesus knew that at first that woman really doubted whether Jesus would be of any to help to her at all - He didn’t even have a rope or a bucket for goodness sake!
We may not be sure either but God can reveal to us what is really going on in our lives also and convince us that he can bring change. We might argue with him or get religious like she did, but he listens with interest, giving us a place in his heart and mind, and giving us revelation about our own soul and a revelation about himself and about a caring protective Father God and about loving powerful Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit tells us to leave our empty bucket behind as she did. He says to us as he said to her ‘If you only knew the gift that God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.’
God is at work and we are at rest – our sin and shame don’t count anymore - Jesus has ransomed our soul. Amen.

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GOSPELS 7 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

We started the Gospel series where all four Gospels gave of the account of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, being baptised by John the Baptist. Some of John the Baptist’s disciples began to follow Jesus, and after his forty days of temptation in the wilderness he regathered some of these disciples by the sea of Galilee and they followed him into greater Galilee where he chose the twelve Apostles and performed many miracles and healings before returning to his hometown in Nazareth.

But we now need to go back to the first section of Chapter one of John’s Gospel and fill a gap which contains something that is unique to John’s Gospel. It is the magnificent account of the creation of all things in the Universe through Jesus the Word – Logos – of God. Jesus as the Logos is the eternal creative articulation of the will of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the eternal supernatural activity that acts upon that creative Word of Jesus in every situation. That is what happens for us as we receive the word of faith that comes into our lives when Jesus speaks to us concerning the will of the Father - and we see the powerful work of the holy Spirit bringing into being the fulfillment of that Word for our life and our situation. That is our prayer life.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos – the creative life and design and purpose giving utterance of Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He (Jesus) was in the beginning with God. 3. Everything was made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Artificial Intelligence, without any sketch or drawing plan but simply by writing a descriptive string of imaginative mere human words into a computer program can generate a video animation of weird hybrid creatures that move, like a rabbit with the scaly tailed end of an echidna, and fish that walk and talk – and it looks real. It is an illusion that is hailed as a creative wonder. But God through the one creative Logos Word of Jesus has created orchids that look like laughing monkeys, flowers that look and move like dancing fairies, and insects whose magnified faces contain an exact image of a rabbit’s head, and the African Grey Parrot can have a vocabulary of 2000 words. There are many millions of these works of art in God’s creation gallery from microscopic ballerina marine creatures at the bottom of the ocean to trillions of galaxies in the Universe. So people can say words and make things appear real and alive but they cannot create life. Illusion is not life, and it is not truth – more about that later.

Vs4. In Him (Jesus) was life and that life was the light (phos) of Mankind.
The word used for life in that verse is zoe, which means the fulness of essential and spiritual life - as opposed to bios – which speaks of lower life forms.

Jesus possesses the zoe life in its fullest and most divine sense and Jesus became the source and embodiment of eternal life for humanity. Jesus is also the illumination of the truth and the revelation of that life. He is the way, the truth and the life. He show us the way to understand and live in God's will, and through his light and truth humanity can experience lifegiving salvation of the soul.

Vs5. And that light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it (katalambano – hold it down, supress it, enclose it)
That verse tells us that the illumination of that truth about knowing God and knowing his will is able to bring that revelation into the darkness and obscurity and delusion of the world, and the darkness of the world cannot overcome or overwhelm it. If darkness tries to enclose or surround light it is overpowered by light.
And in the same way, if we are full of the light and truth of Jesus in our minds and hearts of faith, the delusional and manipulative words of darkness that try to penetrate the light of our truth will dissipate and come to nothing. They are unable to move us from our conviction of the truth that the Holy Spirit reveals to us about Jesus and the Father.
The Apostle Paul said ‘For God, who Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Jesus Christ. (2Corinthians 4:6)

John goes on to write in the next verse (vs 6) that John the Baptist said he himself was not the light but he was sent to bear witness to that light which was Jesus, so that everyone (pas) - all of humanity - might believe through Jesus. John says (vs 9) ‘that Light was the true Light which gives light (the revelation of God’s zoe life) to every man that comes into the world’ (every human being that arrives on the planet).
John then writes (vs 10) that Jesus who made the world came into the world, to his own, but the world did not know him or receive him. John writes that Jesus would give power and freedom and liberty to those who did receive him and they would grow into mature sons and daughters of God the Father. He said that those people who received him and believed in him would be born from above from God, not just from human reproduction.
Being born of God is one thing but growing up is another thing, growing in the power of The Spirit into grown up sons and daughters on a journey of volunteering to do what pleases the Father.

John writes (vs 14) that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, (flesh =sarx – humanity that can choose to go it alone) and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten (monogenes – the One begotten Son) of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus was the only human being who became ‘flesh’ (‘humanity that can choose to go it alone)’ that was born directly from the Spirit seed of the Father (monogenes – the One begotten Son) – born from above and into the earth through his earthly mother Mary. We are not born from above directly as Jesus the only begotten Son was from the Father. We were born from above through the spiritual seed of Jesus himself, the Logos, ‘truly God and truly Man’. Jesus was always truly God and became truly human – we were always truly human and became partakers of the Divine nature (2Peter 1:4). The bible says that we have been born again (anagenna??- born anew from above), not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God (Logos – Jesus) which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23).

Jesus prophesied and explained this new birth to a man called Nicodemus, whom Jesus referred to as the Teacher of the Jews and who confessed that Jesus could not have done the things that he did unless he was the Christ, and Jesus answered him and said "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again (gennao anothen – born from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3)

This final verse (vs 14) that we have been discussing, about Jesus the Logos becoming flesh and dwelling among us caused a split between Christianity and both the religious Jews and the educated Greeks when the Apostle John wrote it. Religious Jews believed that the Word of God always was and still is the Torah of the words of the Law through Moses, and it was blasphemy to say the word had become a Person, so they rejected John’s Word Logos for that reason. It’s all about words.
The Greeks believed that Logos was a word that described the philosophical concept of the designing and sustaining and ordering principle of the Universe – it could not possibly be a Person! so they rejected John’s Word Logos for that reason.

But Christians believe that Logos is a Person, Jesus, the Logos, who is the articulation of the Father’s will in all situations. The Bible says that Jesus the Logos upholds all thing in the Universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) – that is what is real and what is real will last.

The world imposes a superficial reality on many aspects of social and moral and scientific truth by taking words and giving them new meanings that suit its own ideologies. That turns non truth into truth and non-virtue into virtue and even non science into science, and that is an exercise of darkness trying to overcome light.
But when darkness tries to enclose light, the darkness has to finally break up and disappear. And when Logos light and truth penetrate darkness the darkness also finally breaks up and disappears.

God has created humanity in his own image and does not want humanity to live in bondage to darkness. God looked upon a world in bondage to darkness in the days of Noah, and he looked upon Abraham and Lot in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he looked upon the earth in the days of Pharaoh and Moses where his people had been enslaved in bondage to darkness and he brought deliverance through people of faith who heard his word of salvation.

As we allow the incorruptible seed of the Logos of Jesus to grow within us we can confidently pray and believe John’s word which says ‘that Light was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world’ and ‘that light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it’

That was promised in the beginning, and I believe that promise is ready to start finding its fulfillment once more. Let us nurture that Logos seed of life and light and truth, and let us water it by our faith and love and let us bear witness to it by our lives, and let us offer it to those in our world. We can know and believe that what is real and lasting will overcome what is ready to pass away.

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THE SPIRIT THAT RAISED CHRIST FROM THE DEAD

On the day of the Resurrection of Jesus some of the Apostles heard the startling report of the women who had visited the tomb where the dead body of Jesus had laid and found it empty, so John and Peter ran there to see for themselves. John arrived first and let Peter go in before him. ‘Then John who had reached the tomb first also went in (after Peter jumped the queue), and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home. (John 20:8). (Why?)

That account reveals the confusion and perplexity that the disciples of Jesus still carried in their minds and hearts even after following Jesus for three and a half years and witnessing his miracles and hearing his words of wisdom and receiving his direct instruction. They had also scattered and abandoned Jesus when he was arrested after the Last Supper, and they were devastated by his death on the cross. All their dreams of sharing his Kingdom authority when he would finally establish his Kingdom and rule over Israel and even the Roman Empire were shattered. The Bible says ‘they had kept on asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” (Acts 1:6). Their inadequate human spirits were not capable of fully understanding what Jesus had been saying throughout all that time of discipleship.

So only a day after seeing the empty tomb Peter and John and most of the Apostles were hiding in a room still afraid and not knowing what to expect next. Then they saw Jesus walk through a closed door into the room where he showed them his risen body, still bearing the scars of his crucifixion. The Bible says During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

On that first occasion when Jesus appeared to them, he breathed his Spirit upon them and they were awakened to the inner peace of the Holy Spirit of the resurrected Jesus and they received his peace. (John 20:19). But they would not live in the overcoming power of his resurrection until he had ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit of power upon them on the day of Pentecost. The Bible says ‘Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with power.” (Acts 1:4)

If the disciples who knew Jesus and saw him live and then die and then saw his resurrected body walk into a room still had a problem believing that he had risen, then what chance does anyone who hasn’t seen Jesus in this life here, now, have of believing in the Resurrection? That is what we are discussing today – (not just historical evidence) John and Peter both write about that later, about believing and not seeing. (John 20, 1Peter 1:8)
And it was only when the disciples embraced the life of the indwelling Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and lived in its overcoming power that they became true witnesses to his resurrection. That is because the indwelling Holy Spirit witnessed to them that their human spirit had been joined to the ‘together with God’ Spirit of the risen Jesus.

The same goes for us when we believe that the Holy Spirit has been sent to dwell within us. That becomes the reality of a new eternal existence here on earth of being ‘together with God’ in our life. That is true faith, and that faith sets us free from the dismal fate of having to depend upon our own insufficient human spirit to truly know what we are meant to know, to be who we are meant to be and to do what God really wants us to do. That is God’s desire and design for us.

Our own human spirit, just like the human spirit of the disciples of Jesus, and every other human being ever created is subject to a confusing sense of self-conscious separation from the awesomeness of an Almighty God. That started back with Adam and Eve who also had an inadequate human spirit like ours, breathed into Adam when he was created, but they did not have the availability of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were beguiled by the serpent to disobey God and eat of the tree they were forbidden to eat from. He told them they would be like God if they did and they could go it alone like he had. He knew that this would trigger a wrong desire in their hearts because he lived out of that covetous desire himself. Going it alone led to disaster, and at that moment they let a mindset of ‘separation from God’ enter the spiritual DNA of humanity - and God saw that coming.

And that lie of darkness is still at work in the human spirit of all of us doing its work of separating the human mind and heart from the life of God and enticing people to live an independent self-sufficient life to have everything they want for their life. (Ephesians 2:1-2). That lie brings all kinds of disappointment and failure to our determined self-centred efforts and we can only overcome that lie of darkness by receiving the Holy Spirit that has been sent to dwell within us. We are designed by God to live in that reality of life together with God, and we need to choose that, because we are also enticed by darkness to live our own go it alone reality.

Jesus lived his life on earth in a limited human spirit just like ours and he lived in a close and perfect togetherness with his Father because he was born from above into the earth through the Holy Spirit.
Jesus chose to live in the perfect loving harmony of that relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit and not to live out of his human go it alone self - and so he was able to overcome all the trials and temptations. He lived a perfect together with God life and surrendered it on the cross for us and then sent humanity his risen Spirit life so that we could also be born from above. He overcame the energy of humanity’s go it alone spirit and disempowered it from putting a distance between us and him and being driven to only please self and not God.

The Apostle Paul, when he was called Saul before his conversion had tried to be the best of the best in his obedience to the Law and the Commandments, and he tells us that he had once prided himself on being a Pharisee of the Pharisees. But it never really worked because of the dismal mindset of separation from God that he inherited from Adam just like us. As Saul the Pharisee he was made in the image of God, with a cultivated Jewish conscience but he never felt together with God. He plaintively says ‘For while I was living in the flesh (That is, the human spirit going it alone its own way), my sinful desires, confronted by rules and regulations, won the battle against my good intentions, and that distanced me further from God. (Romans 7:5).

The human spirit of Saul made in the image of God had one part that aspired to lofty righteous ideals and would have been willing to die for them. But there was another hidden part of him that resentfully delighted in killing Stephen the martyr, who lived through the power of the Holy Spirit, doing miracles and preaching powerfully in the name of Jesus. The human spirit is capable of very noble and caring deeds but it has the limitation of having to go it alone, so it is also capable of harmful wickedness and malice.

In Romans chapter Seven Paul tells us that he did not understand his own inner motivations. He said he didn’t always do what he aspired to do but did what he hated to do. He said that there were other impulsive wrong desires that dwelt within him, always there and always motivating him to resistantly follow his separated going it alone self. He throws up his hands and says ‘Hopeless man that I am! Who will deliver me from being embodied in this deathly separation? (Romans 7:24)

Paul then gives thanks for the power of the resurrected life of Jesus that he received when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and was converted and was baptised in the Holy Spirit. He explains that now his ‘together with God’ mind, his true-self mind, knows how to hear and obey God and knows what God wants for him. He also bluntly tells us that in his humanity he is still tempted to operate in wrong desires and feel separate from God. That’s us too.

Probably one of the hardest things to understand for a person who desires to know and love God and is living by faith in the life of the Spirit is that knowing that they are ‘not good enough’ in their mere humanity makes them feel that God must have to distance himself from them. God says NO to that kind of condemnation. Our human failures might make us feel distanced from God – but they don’t make God feel distanced from us (Isaiah 59:1). Jesus has given his life for us so that we can be closer to God than any two people on earth can ever be. That was the whole point of the cross and forgiveness and mercy and Resurrection and receiving the Holy Spirit. God wants the togetherness more than we do.

Paul says in Philippians Chapter two that He wanted to know Jesus and the power of Resurrection. That is what allows us to live above the weakness of our own human nature. He encourages us and says Look, as long as you’re welcoming his abiding presence within you you’ve chosen to belong to him and live in that power of his Spirit. When you know he’s close you can draw close and let him lift you into a better place of faith.

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GOSPELS 6 KINGDOM WORDS OF BLESSING

When we spoke about the wisdom of the words of Jesus in Gospels 5 we saw Jesus being confronted with criticism and antagonism by religious people who were threatened by his undeniable aura of authority. Even his own disciples weren’t quite sure why Jesus was doing the things that he did until they heard Jesus answering his religious critics, so Jesus was teaching them as well as the others – and as well as us, in those moments of enlightenment because of his words of wisdom - revolutionary words of a New Covenant reality that would supersede the Old Covenant religious tradition. This new kind of faith and freedom would be lived by people one day because of his risen life within them.

But now we are going to read the next in line topic of revolutionary wisdom words from Jesus. These are words of the inner spiritual blessings of the Kingdom of God, and these words were spoken to the poor and needy, people who, because they had physical afflictions and infectious diseases or deformities could not enter the temple – the outcasts. And they greeted the words of Jesus with humble incredulous wonder and not harsh antagonism or criticism. These words seemed too good to be true or too impossible to ever experience. They are called The Beatitudes and are found in Matthew 5:1 and also in a shorter form in Luke 6:20. They are often whimsically titled the ‘Be - Attitudes.’ Because they teach us how to ‘be’ so that we might know what to ‘do’. These words have eternal wisdom relevant for any age and any culture to aspire to, but again only able to be fully realized in the New Covenant reality. Human nature cannot do this, we need to be partakers of the Divine nature (2Peter 1:4) which became our treasure when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost.

Matthew 5:1 Jesus saw the multitudes, so he went up into a mountain: and when he was settled, he gathered his disciples around him: And he taught them all, everybody, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Poor in spirit is an attitude. Being poor means to have no resources left – so that means having nothing at all or not having something particular at the time. ‘In spirit ‘means in our very being – it means our whole life – what we have and who we are. Money and material things and outward appearances may appear to make us well off in our being but if we are addicted to that we end up having nothing of value on the inside. The greater blessing is the spiritual blessing of having God as our fulfillment and provision (Ephesians 1:3). The unfulfilled rich young Ruler wanted to attain the Kingdom of God couldn’t receive that blessing. He wanted the inner blessing of the Kingdom but he valued the material blessing more.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

There is a blessing hidden in the grief of the loss of something dear to you for that is when you can receive the comfort of the One who is most dear to you - because of how dear you are to him. He never wants to lose you and he never will, so stay close and be blessed and comforted by that.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

You are blessed when you don’t use power over others to get want you want. People who use power over others think they get what they want but they end up with a thankless life full of nothing. The greatest inner blessing is having the power and love of God within you. And you end up with a grateful life that has everything you could want or needed – content.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
The world wants you lining up to satisfy your appetites on what it has to offer, and those things leave you feeling empty. God wants you to be in alignment with what he has to offer - and having a hunger for that that fills you with an overflowing fulfillment and satisfaction with your life.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
If you make room for other people’s mistakes when they fall short of their good intentions, God will have an ocean of mercy for you that creates the most beautiful space for belonging within the boundless forgiveness and mercy and acceptance of God.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

When your heart’s desire is to see God being pleased with what you think and do for his sake, then he will let you see with your own eyes the wonderful things he is doing in in your world for your sake, and for the sake of those you love.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Children who work together and play together as peacemakers have a heart to see agreement and mutual thoughtfulness and kindness and being there for others in the family. These peacemakers will feel cherished and included in the same way by the Father Son and Holy Spirit who cherish one another and who are dedicated to being there for one another.

All these blessings make us ready to hear the next of the most impossible of all blessings – the one of persecution.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Be joyful and glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for that is how they persecuted the prophets which were before you.

The previous blessings provide you with a bullet-proof suit of armor that protects you emotionally and spiritually and even in the physical stress of being attacked by the aggressive or hidden malevolence of people who hate your devotion to God. They are like the Cains that killed the Abel. But you are an Abel that is Able – able to stand in faith and resilience and let the bullets bounce off. We can even laugh it off because that verse tells us to be joyful and glad. That is one of the most beautiful of the impossible possibilities of all of these boundless Beatitude Blessings. You can actually just be yourself – who you really are and not what the persecutors want you to be like with their fake identity virtues. They are simply resentful and covetous and jealous of your true virtue and behaviour. That is why Cain murdered Abel.
1John 3:12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

And that blessing gets you ready to live in the next exhortation of Jesus to hang in there and persevere confidently and be the true self of who you are and do the true things of what you do that he has creatively designed you for you in your spirit – and in your whole inner and outward being for all to see.

You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost his savour, it is useless and needs to be thrown out, and trodden underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a candle, and puts it under a bush, but on a candlestick; and it lights up the house for everyone. Let your light shine for people and let them see your goodness of who you are and what you do but only let your Father in heaven get the glory.
We need to know who we are in God and with God. We don’t need to know everything that the world knows or thinks it does, or to have to know the future that some internet prophet that you don’t know puts out there in the prophecy market. We need to know God and his ways, so that we know how to be and what to do in God and with God no matter what anybody else thinks you are and what you should be and do. Because you will be making everybody’s life in your world all the better off anyway by knowing God in a real way. And that is what God wants for you.

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GOSPELS 5 THE WISDOM AND THE WORKS OF JESUS

We are now going to look at some of those powerful works of Jesus in Capernaum and greater Galilee that led up to the homecoming visit of Jesus to Nazareth, and his subsequent proclamation of the Jubilee Year.
Those events reveal a fascinating balance of the powerful works of Jesus and the unprecedented and challenging words of wisdom that stunned all those who heard them. The wisdom and the works of Jesus are recorded throughout all the Gospels but in the early chapters of the three synoptic Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke there is a strategic cluster of some of these meaningful events that deserve a mention.

Firstly, in Mark Chapter three, and Luke Chapter six and Matthew Chapter ten there is the significant account of the appointing of the twelve Apostles. And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons: (Mark 3:13)
Some of these men were called at the time of John’s baptism of Jesus, such as Philip and the group of fishermen, such as the brothers Andrew and Simon Peter and the brothers James and John, who were regathered by the Sea of Galilee as we mentioned earlier.
Matthew had also been called in Capernaum, but there is no special mention of how or precisely when the others were called. These men were Bartholomew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot. After they were gathered together Mark goes on to say that they went in and occupied a house’. Jesus then prepared these men for the revolutionary things they were about to experience. They would see before their very eyes the greatest miracles ever performed on earth and they would hear the most revolutionary and life changing words that have ever been uttered.

There are three other stand-out events during that time, that are clustered in a sequence of one passage of Scripture after another in all three of the early Gospel Chapters. They are, Jesus being questioned about fasting, Jesus being the Lord of the Sabbath, and Jesus healing on the Sabbath.
Jesus was being confronted in these Scriptures with criticism and antagonism by religious people who were threatened by his undeniable aura of authority. Even his own disciples weren’t quite sure why Jesus was doing the things that he did until they heard Jesus answering his religious critics, so Jesus was teaching them as well as the others in those moments of enlightenment because of his words of wisdom.

Mark 2:18 Once when John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees do?”
Jesus replied, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the bridegroom? Of course not. They can’t fast while the bridegroom is with them. But someday the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. He was also prophesying that he as the bridegroom Jesus, would be leaving his friends in due course, but he would be coming back soon enough and he would be looking forward to having his friends around him again and rejoicing, not in religious observance, but in relational blessing and celebration. The message for us is that he is our bridegroom now and we are more than friends – we can be his bride if we want to draw that close to him – revolutionary!

He didn’t stop there but continued talking and giving them everyday illustrations of the fact that something very new and lifechanging was about to come into history and become eternal truth, not just religious tradition.

He went on to say ‘Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine must have new wineskins.’ (vs 21-22)

He was prophesying that something unique and unparalleled was soon to happen in the world of the Spirit where the power and love and truth that Holy Spirit would reveal to us would change the way we would relate to a living God, not with tradition and ritual, but by becoming partakers of his Divine nature.
And this new way of living would also be something that religious tradition would never possibly be able to accommodate as it would tear apart the old garment of religious ritual. And just as an old wineskin is hardened and brittle the new wine of the Spirit would burst asunder the man-made traditional structures of the gathering and growing together of God’s people. The newly fermented wine is so alive and active that as it expands it needs the freedom and flexibility of whatever embodies that vitality. He was heralding a new era of the liberty of the life-giving Spirit of God in our midst. That would have been extremely difficult for anyone there to hear and to understand – and it still is! Orderly New Testament Church life needs structure but it is structure that accommodates the power and love and presence of God.

The next confrontation came on a Sabbath day as Jesus and his disciples were walking through the fields and the disciples were breaking off heads of wheat and eating the grain. Some of the Jewish religious leaders saw this and said to Jesus.
Mark 2: 23, “They shouldn’t be doing that! It’s against our laws to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath.” But Jesus replied, “Didn’t you ever hear about the time King David and his companions were hungry, and he went into the house of God—Abiathar was high priest then—and they ate the special bread only priests were allowed to eat? That was against the law too. But the Sabbath was made to benefit man, and not man to benefit the Sabbath. And the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

This was the startling revelation that the Sabbath was instituted to teach us how to live our lives in the rest of faith, not in the religious works of man. Here was another prophetic revolutionary revelation of grace and truth which was difficult if not impossible for the hearers to hear and understand. It is the truth that is to guide our lives of faith – and only Jesus has authority to decide how we are to live a Sabbath life of faith. He tells us to rest in faith while he works on our behalf in the world of the unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Jesus explained this truth to his disciples further at another time when John writes in his Gospel about the disciples need to understand the reality of works and faith when they asked him “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:28) Another religious revolution!

The next incident in this cluster of revolutionary wisdom sayings comes in the following verse in Mark about Jesus healing on the Sabbath.

Mark 3:1 While in Capernaum Jesus went over to the synagogue again and noticed a man there with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. Would he heal the man’s hand? If he did, they planned to arrest him!
Jesus asked the man to come and stand in front of the congregation. Then turning to his enemies he asked, Does the law of the Sabbath day require us to do good or to do harm? Is it a day to save lives or to destroy them? But they wouldn’t answer him. Looking around at them angrily, for he was deeply disturbed by their indifference to human need, he said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” He did, and instantly his hand was healed!

And while the Pharisees schemed to put together a charge of blasphemy against Jesus, he walked on toward the cross to secure for us a new and revolutionary life in the freedom of the Spirit – alive and free but captive to his love and to obedience to his living Word.

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GOSPELS 4 NAZARETH AND THE YEAR OF JUBILEE
After the six weeks of temptation in the wilderness Jesus made his way to Galilee on his way back to his hometown of Nazareth. That journey took quite a long time because he performed miracles and healings and regathered his disciples by the sea of Galilee.
The arrest of John the Baptist by Herod would neatly fit anywhere into those six weeks of Jesus in the wilderness.

Mark’s Gospel records in detail the story of Jesus on his journey from the southernmost end of the Jordan after his forty days in the desert as he heads home northward along the seashore of Galilee. He needed to regather his disciples as they had gone back to their fishing for those six weeks while he was in the desert, probably not knowing for how long Jesus would be absent. Remember that Jesus had already chosen some of them at the time of his baptism by John when they left off being John’s disciples and decided to follow Jesus. Matthew tells the same story of Jesus regathering his disciples as they were fishing.

Mark 1:14 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men." They immediately left their nets and followed Him. When He had gone a little farther on from there, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending their nets. And He called them (kaleo – called out to them- and they realised Jesus was back), and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went after Him. And they went into Capernaum. (Capernaum was a large busy bustling city)
and on the sabbath day he went to the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one that had authority, not like the scribes.

Mark then tells powerful stories of the supernatural works of Jesus starting with him casting out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus and the disciples left the synagogue and Jesus then healed the mother-in-law of Simon Peter, and Mark goes on to say that by sunset the open courtyard was filled with the sick and demon-possessed and a huge crowd of people from all over the city of Capernaum gathered outside the door to watch - and Jesus healed great numbers of sick folk that evening.

Jesus then healed a leper and a few days later healed the paralytic man who was lowered down through the roof by his friends and then goes walking by the sea and sees Matthew in his tax collector office and calls him to follow him also. Mark writes that such throngs soon surrounded Jesus that he couldn’t publicly enter a city anywhere but had to stay out in the barren wastelands where people came from everywhere to find him. Many more healings and miracles occur in the following chapters of Mark throughout what might have taken many, many, months, as Jesus went in and out of Capernaum to other regions of greater Galilee. And we will look at some of these at another time. But the Gospels agree that that initial time of his powerful ministry of healings and miracles was a prelude to Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth (Matthew 4:23, Luke 4:14, Mark chapters 1 to 6)

Jesus would have returned home to the modest and humble township of Nazareth where there would have been the usual measure of poverty and sickness – it hadn’t featured in any of the previous healing and miracle work . Nazareth was in an insulated part of the Galilean countryside surrounded by hills and olive trees, and Jesus would have turned up as the familiar ordinary young carpenter that shared their uneventful lifestyle. And in the synagogue, he would have shared the duty of giving a reading from the Scripture like all the other young men who routinely shared in this way, along with the older men in the community.
By the time that he eventually got to Nazareth everyone would have heard about his preaching and healing and miracles that had happened along his way home which had taken such a long time, but they were not going to believe a word of it until they saw it with their own eyes. Nazareth had a reputation of being a disagreeable and unpleasant place and all the Gospels except for John’s Gospel talk about the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth. John’s Gospel’s only comment about Nazareth is found in John1:45 where Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." And Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good thing come out of Nazareth? (a mindset)

We now read Luke’s account of the homecoming of Jesus.
Luke 4:14 Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, 15 and news of Him had gone out through all the surrounding region.16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as the custom was (for all the young men in the place), He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD." (Isaiah 61:1)

Then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He said to them Today you have heard this Scripture fulfilled." (He is saying I am the fulfilment of Isaiah 61)! They bore witness to him – (They knew that he had spoken truth and had proved it by his recent ministry – and they knew who he was), and they were amazed by the gracious words which he spoke, and they said, "Is this really Joseph's son?"
They were stunned and amazed and impressed but by saying ‘is this really Joseph’s son?’ They displayed the archetypical unbelief syndrome that was the flaw and failure of Israel and of all of us.

Then he said, “Probably you want to quote me that proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself’, (meaning, ‘Why don’t you do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum?’) But I’m telling you that no prophet is accepted in his own hometown! For example, remember how Elijah did no miracles of provision for the many Jewish widows needing help in those three and a half years of famine (who thought they deserved it because Elijah lived there on the Sidon coast), but he was not sent to them by God. Instead, Elijah used a miracle to provide for the widow of Zarephath, which was miles and miles away (sixty miles north of Nazareth). Or what about the prophet Elisha, who healed Naaman, a Syrian, rather than all the Jewish lepers needing healing (and who thought they deserved it - but God is not given to political correctness).
These remarks stung them to fury; and jumping up, they mobbed him and took him to the edge of the hill on which the city was built, to push him over the cliff. But he walked away through the crowd and left them.

Jesus had just proclaimed the ‘Acceptable Year of the Lord’, which refers to the Year of Jubilee, which was meant to be celebrated every fifty years and though still on the calendar it was left unfulfilled, with minimal observance. The Jubilee Year was to be a ‘Super Sabbath’ year of observance and celebration. However, the celebration of the Super Sabbath depended on the observance of the seventh year Sabbath being obeyed seven times in a row, for 49 years and then would come the fifty year Jubilee year (Super Sabbath).

The observance of the seventh year Sabbath meant that Israel were to have a year off their agricultural work every seven years and trust God for him to grow the crops and manage the weather and the locusts, so that they could enjoy being his family in the earth - and he would supernaturally grow the crops and bless their time of enjoyment of being families together - proving to the nations round about that they were the only nation that was favoured by the only God of Heaven. But they had no faith to ever do this.

The Jubilee year spoke of the greatest fulfillment of what might have been. This was the year of being given God’s rest and blessing and provision for their lives both individually and as a people of God. It was the year when all work of any kind had to cease, debts were forgiven, Leviticus 25 says and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family and landholdings were returned to the original owners, and the slaves were given their freedom, and the families were to celebrate the blessings of being God’s children. It was to be a statement of God’s favour upon them forever for all the world to see.

You will notice that after Jesus proclaimed the ‘Acceptable Year of The Lord’, The Year of Favour, The Jubilee Year - he closed the Book, and there was a special reason for that. The next sentence in Isaiah 61 that he would have read said ‘and to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God’. But that was not what Jesus came to do.
‘For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)
But now - Jesus was telling them that he was the manifestation of what the Jubilee Year really meant. He was the one who would bless and provide and set free and take them to himself and to his Father and unify them to be as one with all the other peoples and nations of the earth - as part of the Family of God.
Israel didn’t want to hear it then - but Jesus still wants peoples and nations of the earth, including Israel, to believe him and receive him and his Promise before he returns. Jesus was and still is our Jubilee and still on God’s calendar - it is an interesting observation that two thousand years since Jesus made his Jubilee proclamation, his calendar would now be marking the fortieth Jubilee around this time
James 5:7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the latter rain.

The Bible says that as we press on to know the Lord he will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth (Hosea 6:3).
The early rain is the gentle rain of God’s loving grace that softens the hearts of men and women as they faithfully receive the understanding of God’s love and grace. The latter rain is the deluge of God’s sovereign outpouring of grace upon the earth which will come at his appointed time and where people of all ages will be touched by God and suddenly transformed by his grace. Let us remain constant in prayer and faithfully believe.

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GOSPELS 3 OUR IDENTITY AS A CHILD OF GOD.

Luke 4:1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil.
It was into the farthest extents of the dry and almost uninhabitable region of the wilderness area where Jesus went, to come head-to-head with the powers of darkness and overcome the temptations of the devil in his time of forty days of prayer and fasting. He would have travelled beyond the low hills of scrubland down into a lifeless wasteland near Jericho where the Jordan river runs into the dead Sea, which is one of the lowest places on the earth.
That is where John the Baptist lived his life of prayer and fasting amongst a community of zealous Jewish disciples and from where John went out to prepare the way of the Lord.

Moses and Joshua and Elijah also prayed and fasted for forty days and nights in wilderness areas. Moses and Joshua in their prayer and fasting went to Mt. Horeb, where the Law and Commandments would speak God’s word to humanity through Israel. It was the highest place in the Sinai wilderness – and that can speak to us of the highest pathway for mankind to hear God and to obey him in the Old Covenant of the Law. Elijah in his prayer and fasting would hear the still small voice and speak the prophetic word of the Lord to Israel and to humanity on that same high mountain where the law was given – another picture of the highest means of God’s voice speaking to mankind – through the Old Testament prophets.
But Jesus in his prayer and fasting took humanity to the lowest depth of the earth in Jordan of the Dead Sea to speak God’s living Word against the power of sin and disobedience to all of Mankind, taking the sin of humanity into death and overcoming darkness for us. Jesus took his humanity, on behalf of our humanity from the lowest place on earth to fulfill the highest achievement of humanity in fully obeying the Law and Commandments without ever sinning. Jesus killed off sin as being the ruler over the soul of mankind to bring us into new life. He came from the highest place in Heaven to the lowest place on earth to bring us into the highest place of life with himself.

A very interesting feature of Luke’s Gospel is that before he writes about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he gives the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam, back to the beginning of humanity, testifying that Jesus is one with us in his humanity in the first Adam. And the Bible also refers to Jesus as the last Adam and the life-giving Spirit. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to give us his life giving Spirit.
So we are one with Jesus in the first Adam and we are one with Jesus in the last Adam as we become a life-giving Spirit with him (1Corinthians 15:45). Matthew is the only other Gospel writer that shares the same story of the temptation in the wilderness – and he is also the only other writer that gives us a genealogy of Jesus, except that his genealogy only goes back to Abraham – the root of the olive tree of Israel, not of all of humanity. We have been grafted into that tree by faith (Romans 11:17), but more than that, we have been implanted into Jesus the Vine (1Peter 1:25 – born again of the seed (logos)of God) and we are his branches (John 15:1) and bear the fruit of his life, not just Abraham’s faith – which we have also inherited. We’ve got Jesus the last Adam to go back to.

Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was hungry afterward. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." But He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:
He shall give His angels charge over you,' and 'In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"(he quotes the beautiful Psalm 91 to Jesus) Jesus said to him, "It is written again, You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"
Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

The first two temptations are prefaced by ‘If you are the Son of God’ – tempting Jesus to prove his identity of his being the Son of God. They were both temptations about Jesus doing something in his own strength. The first temptation was about human appetites – having what you want when you want it – rocks into bread – make it happen. Jesus served his Father, not his appetites.

The second temptation was about human performance, skill and achievement, even showmanship – leaping off the spire of the temple and declaring that God would send angels to save him (Psalm 91:11). This temptation of using a self-selected Scripture for your own advantage for fame or glory or a spiritual image is taking the name of The Lord in vain and Jesus was having none of it, and he left a judicious warning for all of us.
The third and final temptation was about Jesus being tempted to have something – in fact ‘have everything’ – all the kingdoms of the world and their glory - by letting darkness rule in the heart. This final kind of temptation can start off in a person desiring to have enough money to have enough power to have enough freedom to have as much control over their own lives as they want, and even power and control over other people – that is the power of the world – the political agenda.

So having things and doing things is not what gives us an identity, and having power over other people does not mean that we have great stature, and wanting those things for ourselves does not give us power over temptation but puts us in the way of temptation.
Jesus has empowered us with a different kind of power, and as far as temptation goes Jesus has told us that in him we can overthrow powers of darkness (Ephesians 6). But as far as our identity is concerned God has given us the greatest power on earth, becoming the sons and daughters of God under and within his power.

John 1:12 ‘But as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God (brothers and sisters with Jesus – technon - children), to those that believe on his name: When we receive Jesus we pick up that authority and liberty to start ‘becoming’. We start off as children being told how to do the right thing and then we grow into grown up sons and daughters on a journey volunteering to do what pleases the Father. The Bible says that the journey of becoming grown up sons and daughters is through being led of the spirit.

Rom 8:14. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (huios – developing into grown up sons and daughters). For you no longer need to see yourselves as slaves to fear, but you can choose to see yourselves as having a loving Father that has made you part of his family.
What we are pursuing in our lives is ‘becoming grown-up sons and daughters’.
In these days there is such vast emphasis on individuality and autonomy for a child to determine their own course, that parents have little say in determining the course of a child’s life (and in fact they can get into trouble for telling a child what they should and should not do). This was not always the case, but today things are horrifically different. However, I believe that God is doing something in these days to put things back on track in the hearts of individuals and in families, and that includes in the family of God. Jesus wants us all to have a spiritual and relational family base to live within, with him, and this is only fully done through him. It is through the son – the real big brother, that we become developed sons and daughters. Jesus’ ministry was not just for us to have forgiveness of sins and go to Heaven, but to develop family purpose. He modeled sonship to us and he develops sonship and daughtership in us. The ministry of the holy spirit is to bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. That leads to us coming to know where we truly belong and what is our true identity.

If we are living a life of togetherness with God and recognize that he is with us on the journey of our life and bringing his future to us. Then we will no longer become anxious to find out what is going to happen next in our lives. As we grow as sons and daughters it becomes simpler to us, because we are less inclined to say, “I wonder why God allowed this or that?” And we begin to see that the compelling purpose of God lies behind everything in life, and that God is divinely shaping us into agreement with his good will for our future. We can now trust in the knowledge and the wisdom of God, not in our own abilities. But a wilful and self-determined purpose of our own can destroy the simplicity and the calm, relaxed peace which should be the life experience of the growing up child of God.

A beautiful outcome in all of this is that when we focus on ‘becoming sons and daughters’ we also start really becoming brothers and sisters. When we start caring for one another as brothers and sisters the Father starts doing things that create something on this planet that Jesus prayed for when he prayed to the Father for us - when he was on earth. “I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me because of the testimony of these. My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father—that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me. (John 17:20

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PRAYER OF PEACE

There is a beautiful Scripture of our spiritual communion with God in Philippians 4:6-7 which says ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’

The wonderful promise of the Prayer of Peace that God gives us in this Scripture is that he will guard and protect our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. That is what overcomes the anxiety of a busy mind and a fretful heart that burdens our souls, and that is what allows us to pray the prayer of faith with thanksgiving in any situation.
The Greek word for anxious is merimna?? which means to be overly troubled by too many concerns and needs at the one time (or all the time), whether these concerns are our own or for others we care for.

This Scripture is a gracious appeal from God’s Spirit to our spirit – and our spirit is made up of our mind and our heart. But to get through to our spirit God has to get past our soul, and it is our souls that get overcrowded with too many soulish thoughts of the mind and feelings of the heart that fight for priority to get attention.

Our communion of spirit to Spirit with God opens the way for God to speak truth into our minds and renew our minds in our spirit. The truth that comes from the spiritual renewal of our mind informs our heart with a faith that believes and trusts in God and in his good will and purpose for us in our prayer for our needs.
The truth that our mind perceives informs what the heart believes – that is a fridge hanging statement to keep us focussed on what God wants us to know and what he wants us to believe.

I believe that Scripture about prayer is a key logos word of God regarding the prayer of peace and thanksgiving. In Hebrews 4:12 The Bible speaks about that logos word as the word of God’s creative design and purpose that is like a sword that is able to divide between the soul and the spirit - and we need that logos word so that we can understand what is happening in our soul and in our spirit, because the anxiety is in the soul but the prayer of faith is in the spirit.
The Scripture gives us an example of that word sword piercing between joints and marrow. The outside of a joint bone is like the soul and the marrow on the inside is like spirit - the real life-giving substance of the bone. Prayer is not just about trying to fix the outside problems that we see about us but about how God reorders us on the inside for us to see his will and for us to receive what he is faithfully putting in place for us. Good marrow means strong bones – but even if a bone gets broken it will heal well if the marrow is good.
Our souls can become overwhelmed by the outer chaos and disorder that we see around us in this world, but our spirit joined to God’s Spirit is strengthened by the truth and order and promise of the good things of God that he has in store for us. That Scripture ends by saying that that sword word is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, so it helps us to know what is going on in our disturbed soul so that we can exercise faith in our spirit that can assure us that Jesus is dealing with these needs for us in a way that only he can, and in that way our souls can be at rest and rise above the anxiety.
The promise of the Prayer of Peace is that God will guard our hearts and minds through Jesus. That is why he tells us to bring these things to him with thanksgiving – thanksgiving for what? Thanksgiving that Jesus will intercede with the Father on our behalf according to God’s will for our lives. So that means he is reordering our prayer. God is at work to reorder our lives for the best outcome for our lives – his outcome – not what our stressed or demanding souls would force into action if we could have things our way and not his. That is the peace that surpasses all understanding.

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THE GOSPELS 2 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS

We saw in the previous story of the Gospels, which was about John’s baptism of repentance, that the four Gospels were written by four different men of different temperaments and backgrounds who wrote from different perspectives and at different times. This means that there were variations in detail and emphasis in the narratives and there were certain gaps in some Gospels that end up being filled by other Gospels. Fortunately in the previous sermon the starting point in all the Gospels was John’s baptism. That is called the data point or point of convergence. After that event there is variation as to what happens next and that gets more complex as the Gospel story unfolds as the writers are not dedicated to a chronological order of events.

Commentators are astoundingly at odds with one another in agreement with the of the order of events so I’m having my own shot at presenting an order and attempting to give logical reasons - more logic than revelation - as the stories themselves bring their own revelation of Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit. I’ll explain as I go on – and feel free email me with your own ideas or to disagree or discuss because I stopped being infallible about thirty years ago. Right now in this next story about the baptism of Jesus we will see the same individual perspectives in different Gospels. But there is one Gospel that appears to set the logical pattern of events that come after the baptism of Jesus.

John 1:26 John said “I baptize with water, but there is one here you do not know about and he will come to you after me, and I am not even worthy to untie the strap of his sandal”
These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing, and the next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I was talking about, ‘This man ranks before me, because he existed before me and I did not know him, but I was sent to baptise with water, so that he would be revealed to Israel.” And John testified: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not realise it was him, but God who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and now testify that this is the Son of God.”
John 1:35 The next day John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and looking at Jesus as Jesus walked along, John said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
John’s disciples following Jesus locks in a series of day after day events starting with the phrase ‘the next day’…

However, the supernatural appearance of the Holy Spirit as a dove descending upon the head of Jesus features in all of the Gospel stories about the baptism of Jesus. The other three Gospels appear to indicate that the very next thing that happens after his baptism is that he goes into the wilderness for forty days. However, the Gospel of John alone mentions that certain other events after the baptism of Jesus take place before Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

It is interesting to note that when we read Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus and the mention of the dove of the Spirit alighting upon him we read in the next verse that Jesus was ‘then’ led by the Spirit into the wilderness. However, the Greek word for ‘then’ is ‘tote’ which can mean ‘sometime after that’. So the event of the baptism of Jesus and the ‘sometime after that’ reference makes room for other things to have happened to Jesus between those two major events.

But when we read Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism and the dove alighting upon his head it would appear that Jesus arises out of the water and strides directly into the wilderness, because Mark uses the Greek word ‘euthys’, which is translated as ‘immediately’ in the King James Bible. However, Strong’s concordance gives a range of time descriptors to that word euthys, ranging from ‘forthwith’ to ‘by and by’. This also makes room for other things to perhaps have happened to Jesus between those two major events.

And again, when we read Luke’s account, Jesus is baptised and the dove appears again as usual, then Luke states that after his baptism Jesus returns from the Jordan and goes into the wilderness.

The reality is that between those events of Jesus being baptised and the dove appearing, and then going into the wilderness, there were other significant things that did occur. This is graphically portrayed in the Gospel of John where he describes other events that happened at the Jordan River where the baptism took place, where we then see a number of ‘next day’ statements that show us a logical sequence of events that occur one after the other taking place - before Jesus could have gone into the wilderness for forty days. So reading on in John chapter one, on the day after the baptism of Jesus we read;

John 1:35 The next day John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and looking at Jesus as Jesus walked along, John said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, saw them following, and said to them, “What are you seeking after?” And they said to Him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are You staying?” And Jesus said to them, “Come and see. So they came and saw where he was staying and they remained with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour (4PM).
One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Jesus, was Andrew, who first went to find his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ). Then he brought him to Jesus. When Jesus saw him, He said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

So we see the first significant event to take place before Jesus goes into the wilderness is that of Jesus gathering disciples, including some that were former disciples of John the Baptist who was still present at the river baptising people. We then continue reading in John;

John 1:43 The next day Jesus went forth into Galilee, (The baptism occurred in Judea at Bethabara, so Jesus would have travelled north along the flat land beside the lake of Galilee), and on the way He found Philip that day and said to him, “Follow Me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, (in northern Galilee) the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip went looking for Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, as well as the prophets, wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph”…
Vs. 47. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him and said to him, “Here is an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip went to get you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Nathaniel joins the other disciples on the trek from the baptism area at the Jordan River heading northward and well into Galilee, and John then writes about another significant event that was to happen before Jesus would get to go into the wilderness – and that was to be the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.

John 2:1. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee (The phrase ‘on the third day’ is used eleven times in the four Gospels and is sometimes translated as ‘after three days’ and it allows time for the journey of the disciples from Bethany to Galilee).

The mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus came to the wedding bringing his new disciples with him. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “Son They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this mean for you and me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Mary does not command Jesus to do anything in particular but is prompted to mention the obvious need that was there and then leave everything in God’s hands. God the Father was right in the midst of all of this, and so was was the Holy Spirit, who may have prompted Mary to make her comment, and who would also have fully understood Jesus making his comment about the meaning of this and that his time had not yet come. He would have known that Jesus would ask the Father, as Jesus had yet to go through the temptation in the wilderness and likely thought that only then could he embark on his ministry of power and signs and wonders. But John says a few verses down (vs.11) that this was the first of the signs that Jesus did – ordained of the Father.

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding at least eighty litres. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11. This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. and his disciples believed in him. 12. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

The sign, or miracle of the changing of the water into wine is a clear sign that the supernatural ministry of Jesus had begun. But there is another sign that can be seen in the story of the earthen vessels. We can see that the six earthen water vessels can speak of the fact that the first earthen vessel of humanity was created out of the earth on the sixth day of God’s creation. We also see that these six water vessels were ordinarily used for ritual cleansing with water, but now they were to be used for the outpouring of the new wine of the Spirit. So - This sign also highlights John the Baptist’s remarks when he said ‘I indeed baptise you with water but he who comes after me will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’. It is also interesting that the first sign of the ministry of Jesus was at a wedding and the last sign of Jesus will be from Heaven and will also involve the marriage of Jesus with his Church as his bride (Ephesians 5:27).

Jesus had just shown that he was the earthen vessel that contained the new wine of the Spirit of God. And he would now go deep into the wilderness for forty days to overcome the power of darkness. He would then return in the power of the Kingdom of God to Nazareth to preach in the synagogue, doing many powerful miracles and healings along the way.
He is telling us through that story that we also are not just earthen vessels filled with the cleansing water but that through him we can confidently be aware of ourselves as water always being changed into wine. It takes faith for us to realise that we have been filled with the Holy Spirit and it takes faith to know that we can be always ready to pour out of his life-giving spirit into a needy world around us.

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GOSPELS 1 BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE

The combined accounts of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, give us a comprehensive narrative of the life of Jesus from his birth through to his resurrection and ascension into Heaven. The four Gospels are written by four different men of different temperaments and backgrounds who also write from different perspectives, so there are variations in details and emphases and there are certain gaps in some Gospels that end up being filled by other Gospels. For example, only Matthew and Luke write in their early chapters about the birth of Jesus and give genealogies of his ancestry.
The Christmas stories in the books of Matthew and Luke reveal the fact that Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins because of their mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, and would have met one another as families in their younger years when everyone visited the Temple in Jerusalem for the three major Jewish feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. And they may also have enjoyed other family gatherings together before John went off to live in the wilderness.

John the Baptist had for many years lived a monastic life in the wilderness amongst a group of male Jewish disciples called the Essenes (which are not mentioned as such in the Bible but are referred to generally as Zealots), and they lived in the lowest geographical place in the earth close to the Dead Sea near Jericho. Simon the Zealot is named in the Gospels as a disciple of Jesus, and Judas Iscariot is also believed to have been a Zealot. Iscariot means to be a member of the Sicarii, the Zealots who committed assassinations against Romans and their allies and were waiting for a Messianic leader to lead them into war against the Roman oppressors. This could partly explain the disappointment of Judas and his bitter betrayal of Jesus.

All the Gospel writers begin talking about the ministry of Jesus by introducing the ministry of John the Baptist and his message of repentance. Matthew dramatically describes the entrance of John the Baptist into the religious and political scene in Judea. He was wearing a camel’s skin and eating locusts and wild honey and he despised the opulent and corrupt lifestyle of the rich and powerful people like Herod Antipas who cruelly lorded over the people on behalf of the Roman Empire. John saw that the integrity of Israel’s religion was under threat and decaying from within and he berated the religious teachers of the Jewish Law as well as the corrupt Jewish tax collectors who acted for the Roman government. The simple God-fearing hearts of the Galileans were becoming more and more burdened by the ungodly influences around them which offended their consciences and distressed their souls, and the same oppression was felt by the needy and the poor in spirit in Judea and Jerusalem. So the warning issued by John the Baptist began to draw many hearts back to godliness like a magnet.
Matthew 3:1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’” Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You offspring of snakes! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth the fruit of repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.

He spoke fervently to all the different types of people who came to hear his message of repentance and the warnings of judgement - and among these were certain fishermen from the Lake of Galilee who had heard how John had been baptising people in the Jordan River.
He told them that if the tree that bore the fruit of their lives was useless then an axe would have to be laid to the root of that tree. He told different ones about how their actions and attitudes had to change, saying to the plentiful who had ample food and clothing that if they had two coats then they should give one away (Luke 3).
‘Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you." Likewise, the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?" So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages." (Luke 3:12:15).

The fervent call of John the prophet to repentance pierced the consciences of many people, drawing their hearts to desire a return to the ways of God just like the prophets of God’s people in the days of old such as Jeremiah; Turn me, O Lord and I will be turned. And after my turning, I was surely sorry. (Jeremiah 31:18)
The word for turning in the Old Testament is ‘sub’ which means turning from and turning to - from the bad that you had been drawn to and being drawn back to the good that God wants for you. But the turning is only the beginning and then there is the sorrow and the need for forgiveness.
God’s word, the Torah guided Israel and highlighted their disobedience of what they had to turn from. There were the weighty commandments not to steal or to kill or to lie and there were the countless precise rules or regulations like the multitude of unclean food laws or the touching of dead things like reptiles - lizards, and the hundreds of other ordinances in the book of Leviticus. They would have to go to the priest who would offer specific sacrifices of atonement on their behalf such as goats, bulls, doves and pigeons, for all of these transgressions and in this way a person received forgiveness. Then once a year on the Feast of yom kippur, the Day of Atonement, all Israel were cleansed and forgiven. But as that sense of being right with God soon wore off they their minds and hearts continued day after day to bear the guilt and shame for all of these sins and indiscretions.

The word in the New Testament for this kind of repentant turning towards God and away from self is stronger than sub in the Old Testament. The Greek word is epistreph?? which is found in this transformational Scripture from 2Corinthians.’ even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord (epistrepho), the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom and liberty. But we, all of us, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord (2Corinthians 3:15)

This word epistrepho comes from the word trope which means being drawn in a certain direction because of an attracting influence. The movement of a plant shoot being drawn towards the sun is phototropic, which means being drawn to the light (photos) because of a growth substance called auxin which is part of its design of creation. A plant shoot will not reach up and grow toward the light if it is corrupted at the roots or deprived from its auxin.

Part of the creative design of every human heart is that it is spiritually coded to be drawn toward the light of God’s love and truth. But there is a part in every human mind and heart that can be drawn away from the light by being damaged at the roots by the destructive power of darkness and become blinded from God’s light and truth. This struggle goes on in every human heart since the time of Adam when darkness first invaded the human soul.

The fervent words of John the Baptist were able to draw the poor in Spirit away from darkness and toward the light, but John the Baptist could only point toward the light that only Jesus could shine into their hearts. John pointed to Jesus and said to the people ‘I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance (a change of mindset, turning from and turning to), but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

And this is where John’s Gospel fills in a gap in the other Gospels about who the true light is.
‘God sent John as a witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is the true Light. John himself was not the Light; he was only a witness to identify it, but then the one would come who is the true Light and to bring light to everyone who comes into the world. But even though Jesus the true light made the world, the world didn’t recognize him when he came. And even in his own land and among his own people, the Jews, he was not accepted. Only a few would welcome and receive him. But to all who received him, he gave the power (exousia – authority, liberty, freedom and sovereignty) to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them. (John 1:6)
Welcoming and receiving Jesus in any and every circumstance in our lives is the sovereign authority and freedom that wins against the struggle of the power of darkness to damage our souls.
David in the Psalms described this internal destructive drawing power of darkness. He asked God to search his heart and know him and to show him any wicked way that was in him and he asked God to lead him in the way everlasting. The word for wicked here is ‘ôs?e?; an idol (as in fashioning an idol); also pain (bodily or mental): or sorrow, wickedness. (the destructive baggage in our souls – confused mind and crippled heart)

We can have the same honest prayer as David had to search our heart and show us any wicked way in us and to draw us into the way everlasting. That wicked way, the ‘oseb’ of inner pain along with all the other crooked ways that cripple our souls draws us like a magnet back into ourselves where we resist the drawing power of God’s love and truth to us. It is grievous to see so many people in these days being drawn inwards by the pain and sadness in their lives rather than being drawn upwards into the light of God’s hope and purpose for their lives.
Many people sadly spend most of their thinking lives in the inner pain of their souls, trying to find a way to fix things and feel better about themselves instead of finding the freedom of faith in God . It’s one thing to be made aware of the oseb of our inner pain and waywardness but we do not have to go and get a priest like in the Old Testament to make a sacrifice of atonement, because we have what Jesus has done for us and the fervent drawing of the Holy Spirit turning us towards him, to his love and truth about who we are in our togetherness with him.

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ALL ABOUT DEDICATION

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated, and Luke describes the dedication ceremony of Jesus in the temple in symbolic detail. ‘Then it was time for their purification offering as required by the law of Moses, so his parents took him to Jerusalem to dedicate him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, “If a woman’s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the LORD.’ (Luke 2:22).

The Jewish rite of dedication was a re-enactment of the firstborn sons of Israel being redeemed from the angel of death when Israel was supernaturally released from bondage under Pharoah and the firstborn sons of Egypt were slain (Exodus 13:12).
The dedication of the firstborn is called Pidyon haben, whereby the father presents the child with five silver shekels to the priest, returning his firstborn son to God. The priest then symbolically offers to accept five silver shekels instead of the child’s life, and once the payment is made the son is redeemed (Numbers 18).
The number five in the Bible speaks of grace and silver typifies redemption. The redemptive power of grace over bondage to the Law is also symbolised by Luke in the fact that there are also five mentions of the word Law in that chapter of Luke even though Luke didn’t craft the chapter sections! The Holy Spirit does as he wills – and there is nothing that compares to those five mentions of law in any other chapters in the New Testament. Jesus was dedicated on our behalf for us to be supernaturally brought out of bondage from the world and from the Law by his grace. We saw in the book of Acts that Luke observed and understood Paul’s fervent teaching of grace overcoming the bondage of the Law, and he embeds the power of that truth into this Gospel also.

The Holy Spirit had prompted a man named Simeon to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had once revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord the Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and praising God.
‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)

Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her son Jesus.
‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, and that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed.
This prophesy declares Jesus as the one who represents the central truth of human life which challenges us to either accept or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his life, his death and resurrection, his ascension and his sending of the holy Spirit. This truth is the challenge that provokes opposition and denial in the human heart, where all our inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart into account. Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and justice and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind.

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East, and these Babylonian scholars knew the Biblical scrolls that spoke of a coming Messiah. Babylonian philosophy and beliefs had been impacted by the Jewish prophet Daniel during the seventy year captivity of the Jews, and he had become a prophetic hero of both the Jewish and Babylonian cultures.
These Wise Men would have seen an exceedingly bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky (which is now known to have been a convergence of two great planets) and they had followed this great light to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem about the birth of the new king of Israel.

Their line of questioning and discussion came to the ears of the local ruler King Herod, who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he had become extremely threatened by the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been heralded by some shepherds and was being excitedly spoken about all over Judea. He also had some knowledge about the Scriptural prophesies about the birth of a Messiah or a new king to begin a new kingdom in the earth, but he was obsessed about creating his very own dynasty instead. So Herod secretly summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them the whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king. All he needed to know was where to send his garrison of soldiers so that the child could be killed.

The Wise Men proceeded to follow the bright star and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying, and when the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
That same night an angel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt that night, and to stay there until he brought further word, warning him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him.

Then Herod became infuriated, and he commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah; ‘In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss. (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18)

Herod died soon after this, and the angel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). But when Joseph learned that the son of Herod, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, until the angel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. They came and settled in a city called Nazareth, fulfilling yet another prophesy, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23), and they settled there as a family for many years, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult.

During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him with a caravan of many other families to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year (celebrating the saving of the lives of the firstborn and the supernatural deliverance of Israel out of Egypt).
When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, so they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only on the third day that they finally found him in the Temple, astounding the teachers of the Law with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. Jesus said to his perplexed and distressed parents ‘didn’t you know that I had to be about my Father’s work?’ Jesus then went home with them and was subject to them, and the Bible says ‘Jesus grew and increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. (Luke 2:52)

Jesus knew the fulness of his Heavenly Father’s love towards him, and that he was the one who would make that unlimited love available to all of us. He also knew the unlimited dedication of his Father toward him. It is one thing for us to know and realise through Jesus the love of our Father God, but it is another thing to know his unlimited dedication to us as well. Jesus was sent to express God’s dedication to us and to share it with all of us as people that he wants to live for and live with forever.

There is an inbuilt capacity created by God in every human heart to desire to dedicate themselves to something greater than themselves that is be born out of true concern for a noble or virtuous cause, or to dedicate themselves lovingly to a relationship. But there is also an intense form of dedication to a harmful cause that is born out of resentment and vengeance against a perceived injustice. Our capacity for heartfelt dedication is but an echo of God’s great dedication to all of us as his own beloved human creation and this was totally lived out in his dedication to Jesus, who responded with his total dedication back to the Father. And Jesus gives us the grace to respond in dedication back to God.

Within the heart of every person there also exists the fierce dedication of the Holy Spirit struggling to win our hearts for Jesus, and his struggle with the human soul results in mankind’s agony of inner conflict. That is the hidden and suppressed inner pain of a sad humanity. But real freedom from that pain comes with our acceptance of God’s relentless dedication to us. And out of that freedom comes our dedication back to God in giving ourselves to Jesus as a brother and friend and as our Lord and Saviour (John 15:15).

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THE GOD WITH US CHRISTMAS STORY

God spoke to a man called Abraham two thousand years before Jesus was born a word of promise that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed, and the Hebrew nation that came from Abraham and that prophetic word of promise became the light that directed the path of the Hebrews. That nation of Israel became the witness of God to the world through the covenant of the Law of Moses who established the temple worship and the temple priesthood. But for four hundred years before Jesus was born the light of the prophetic word to Israel and the supernatural witness of God through Israel to the world had ceased, resulting in a time of silence and darkness.
But God was about to give both his light and his Word of the promise of blessing to the world in the most perfect way. Jesus who was and is the Word (logos) of God would become flesh and dwell with us and would become the light of truth and the supernatural witness of God to this world through his Son Jesus.

Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and He had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of God’s love and goodness and truth, and he sent the angel Gabrielle to announce this amazing news to her. Mary was told by the angel that she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God with Us’ (Emmanuel), and that she was to call him Jesus. The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin.

The Angel also visited Joseph in a dream and told him that Mary, to whom Joseph was betrothed, had been chosen by God to give birth to a son, and that this was to be a divine work of The Holy Spirit who would cause a holy life to ignite within her being, fulfilling a prophecy in the Scriptures with which Joseph was familiar ‘A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14).
The angel also told Joseph to go ahead with the marriage, and when Joseph awoke from his sleep he did as the Angel had commanded him.

In the meantime it came into the heart of Caesar Augustus to do a census and register every person in the known world. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David.
Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the time to pass until she who is to give birth has her son. And he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord… and he will be greatly honoured throughout the world. He will be our Peace.
Joseph and Mary went to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling that seven hundred year old prophesy of his birthplace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary and the journey was tiresome for Mary and he knew he had to get her to the place of his family’s household and stay in a guest-room, which was the custom. He had to get Mary out of the cold, as the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside, but the house was overcrowded, and all the guestrooms were occupied.
The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 2:7 which states that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. But we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in a busy season (there is no ‘innkeeper’ in the Bible), and they did not have to go and look for a stable in some field up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the customary stable of the family home downstairs, that warm place where the animals slept and fed.
Joseph settled Mary as quickly and gently as he could. A mother travailed and a baby cried its cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven was echoed by Joseph in the earth and became a laugh of joy, as he took on the privileged role of being the child’s earthly father.
On earth it was the familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most awesome supernatural birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.
Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together.
The Angel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly the angel was joined by a multitude of other angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill toward Mankind (Anthropos)!"
When the singing had stopped, and the angels had left, the shepherds found the place where this extraordinary event was taking place in the earth, and these simple shepherds became the messengers to the world of the birth of this child, this king of kings, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

Father had always planned for his son to bring forth a new Spiritual species of Mankind into the earth. Humanity has been known as ‘Homo Sapiens’ (Mankind + wisdom). But we could as it were, call this new species that had just come into being ‘homo Divinicus’ (Mankind + God) – God with us.
Now was the time for Jesus to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its sorrow and its lost hope. Jesus would lift Mankind as his brothers and sisters, into a place of shared friendship with The Three in One God.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish (apollymi – lose life, be penalised, mar, destroy, or waste life), but have everlasting life (take hold of his life within their inner being). For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn (penalise) the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16).
The condemnation (penalty) is living with the consequences of our wrong and harmful ways. Inner unbelief leads to outer wrongdoing.
John said ‘the light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were wrong and harmful’ (vs 19).
A wrong and harmful heart hides from the light of exposure to sin, just as Adam did when he first disobeyed God and hid from him. But God knew that the only way for the light of God and the love of God to be known by humanity was for them to know his forgiveness as he had given to Adam and Eve.
And the good news is that this light of God’s truth and love and forgiveness has now entered the world through Jesus.
The Bible says that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not charging their sins against them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation’. So our message to people of the good news about God in Jesus is that God’s true light of love and forgiveness is waiting for them to receive and believe and to live in.

John said that Jesus ‘was the true Light that gives light to every man coming into the world. (John 1:9). This light would be contested by darkness - always, but Jesus overcame that darkness on the cross for all Mankind. And today the Holy Spirit takes on that contest of fighting against darkness in the minds of every person in the world. John wrote about Jesus telling his disciples that after he had gone to be with his father that he would send Holy Spirit to all mankind ‘And when the Helper (paracletos) has come, He will convict the world (kosmos) of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: (John 16:7).’ The Holy Spirit became the partner alongside and within Jesus sharing in every moment of his human life, and he desires to bring the experience of the joining of his Divine Spirit life with our human spirit life and this experience is ours to receive and believe in through our faith and his grace.

God with us means more than just alongside us - it means he is within and through our being, and our faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. That means that the holy Spirit is taking what Jesus (the Logos – the Word) is bringing to each one of us as the whisper into our spirit of the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need in our walk with him. That becomes the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path.
Christmas waits to be truly celebrated in this way. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

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Galilee of the Gentiles

Isaiah prophesied around 720 BC about a time and a place where great light would confront great darkness (Isaiah 9:1). The great light that he writes about occurred with the birth of Jesus, the first Christmas almost two thousand years ago, and the place was in the Middle east in a region called Galilee of the Gentiles, where the darkness of the tyranny of the Roman empire had overcome and subsumed all nations and cultures that opposed it.
There is a phrase spoken with a political emphasis today about the river to the sea which is totally unlike the meaning of when it was first mentioned in the Bible about a land between the River to the Sea and I’m now reading that Scripture.
Isaiah 9:1 But the former times of darkness and despair in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali called Galilee of the Gentiles, where lies the way from the Jordan River to the sea, will one day be filled with glory. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light and for those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.
There is a direct line that passes through the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, in Northern Israel from the Jordan River to the seaport harbour at Haifa. In the year 1947, 4,500 Jewish illegal immigrant refugees from Europe landed in Haifa on board the ship ’The Exodus’. They were sent back for a short time by the British to detention camps in Germany but then in 1948 because of worldwide public sentiment they were allowed back to Haifa where the Jewish population had grown through legal migration over many years to 84,000 so that the population of Haifa had become 66% Jewish.

In the time of Jesus Galilee of the Gentiles was a place where religious darkness and idolatry opposed the then one true religion called Judaism, where even Judaism itself was opposing itself from within, through doctrines of decaying legalism and hypocrisy and pride. Galilee of the Gentiles was the battlefield of good against evil and of light against darkness, but it was to become the wellspring of life out of death.

Jesus, the light of the world of the first Christmas grew up in Galilee of the Gentiles, in the tribal territory of Zebulon and Naphtali and lived there in the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum. And that way from the river to the sea was a busy international trade route interspersed with Roman military garrisons that would have greatly influenced the social and cultural atmosphere in which Jesus lived and where he began his ministry to bring the Kingdom of God into the earth.

In fact, much of what Jesus did in his life and ministry was in Zebulun and Naphtali, in Galilee of the Gentiles. He announced his ministry in Nazareth in Zebulun when he said ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted (Luke 4) and he turned water into wine, his first miracle, in the town of Cana in Naphtali, and he taught the Sermon on the Mount, his first public sermon, in Naphtali (Matthew 5) where he also appointed most of his apostles. He performed a multitude of miracles in the region of Capernaum and a great light did shine along that way from the river to the sea.
He would finally go to Jerusalem where he was destined to die for all mankind and rise again from the dead, and where he is destined to return at the end of the age where he will overcome the final rebellious assault of great darkness against the power of his kingdom of great light. Isaiah’s prophecy would find its future fulfillment through Jesus the King of Kings that has fought and won the battle for our souls.

Isaiah 9:3 You will gather (raba) the nation of Israel, and its people will rejoice. They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest and like warriors dividing the plunder.
4-5 For you will break their yoke of slavery and the oppressor’s rod of power and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David forever more. The dedication of the LORD of hosts will do this.

Over two thousand years on from that first Christmas we see in even greater measure a world that is in great darkness waiting for a great light. The odd paradox is that the world celebrates Christmas as a festive holiday season each year while not understanding the miraculous significance of that great light and not understanding the significant events of great darkness that are happening around about us. The great darkness that now awaits a great light has become a sign that a caring God who wants only the best for his people is waiting to act on behalf of his people. And those people who know their God will also be his signs of hope in today’s world, and when our lives exhibit that kind of hope people will want to know why you have such a hope – and you will have an answer. (1Peter 3:15).

Outer darkness is the manifestation of disorder and corruption and violence which is being seen at the present moment on the ground in Israel, where malevolence and terrorism has reached a fever pitch of destructive power against the nation of Israel, and where hatred of Jews is being stirred up in certain parts of the media and politics.
Malevolence and destructive political activism has been increasing in the world in recent years where groups and individuals contend with each other in power struggles to dominate and do harm to others. This outer darkness is a direct result of inner darkness which is described in the Bible as the work of the ‘god of this world’, the prince of the power of the world of darkness who uses deception to blind people’s minds from receiving the revelation of a loving and forgiving God in Jesus Christ.

The Christmas story is a message of God’s intervention of his great light into both the outer darkness and into the inner darkness of people’s lives, so that they can see the things that are there as they truly are. At the present time God is bringing many things to the surface that have been hidden but are now being exposed so that they can be justly dealt with.

We saw in the prophetic Scripture from Isaiah that Jesus would be called the Prince of Peace, and that the government would be upon his shoulders. Jesus is showing himself in this way at this time in the world as he reorders our lives even in the midst of upheaval and loss and gives us his peace. Only he knows what things lay ahead as he determines the course of history and determines each day of our lives for us as we become drawn into his perfect will for us. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

And Jesus spoke of two different kinds of peace, the peace of God and the peace of the world. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27
The peace of the world is not an inner lasting peace, but it is more like a short-term relief that a person feels because they have trust in their own skills and experience and financial reserves to control the circumstances in their world. These resources are effective against many threats and obstacles and hazards, but when the threats and obstacles and hazards overcome their resources, their peace is gone.
The peace of the world is also the one-upmanship of having the upper hand against rival opposition when it comes against us. This is seen blatantly in the fragile peace of global politics and national security with strategic alliances that are negotiated. And history tells us that worldly alliances don’t last forever – they are short-lived and fragile like the peace of the world.

The peace that God gives us is not fragile as we trust in the alliance of ‘God with us’ in all things so that we never have to just depend upon our own strategies and resources in order to feel safe and secure. Commit your way to the LORD; trust only in him, and he will act.
(Psalm 37:5) God is always acting on our behalf in the world of the unseen, and that is the essence of our faith. That is the source of our peace.

We are not saved from facing the struggles and the adversity, but we are saved from having our souls being defeated and made to feel hopeless. That is what being saved is. He has overcome the world’s power to crush our souls. We are given grace to receive his peace and to administer that peace and good will to others, to be the Gospel of peace in a broken world. You were created to be ‘good news’ in different ways and at different times to different people by the grace that God has already made ready for you to step into.

Isaiah 26:12 – Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us (done = ordained – devised a plan). In other words, God has ordained, before the day starts for you, those times and places where God will meet you in your challenge and you will receive his peace and pass it on and it will be displayed in you as the good news of peace, the Gospel of peace, of the God of peace. Amen

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YOU ARE NOT ALONE
We begin reading in Acts Chapter twenty-seven
Acts 27:1 Paul finally leaves Caesarea and starts his voyage of some two thousand seven hundred kilometres to Rome, along with Luke and another Christian named Aristarchus, and other prisoners, all in the custody of a Roman imperial guard named Julius. After battling headwinds, they landed at Smyrna on the coast of Turkey, and from there they sailed for Italy. Again they struck heavy winds along the southern coast of Crete, finally arriving at Fair Havens and staying there for several days, and Paul spoke to the ship’s officers about the weather being dangerous for long voyages and told them he believed there would be trouble ahead if they went on - perhaps shipwreck, loss of cargo, injuries, and death.
But the officers in charge of the prisoners took advice from the ship’s captain and the owner to go further up the coast to a safe harbour called Phoenix for the winter. Then a light wind began blowing from the south so they decided to sail along close to shore, but abruptly the weather changed and a heavy wind of typhoon strength (a “northeaster,”) caught the ship and blew it out to sea. They tried to face back to shore but couldn’t, so they gave up and let the ship run before the storm, and sailed behind a small island, and hoisted aboard the lifeboat that was being towed behind them, binding the ship with ropes to strengthen the hull.
The next day as the seas grew higher, the crew began throwing the cargo overboard, all the tackle and anything else they could lay their hands on, but the terrible storm raged on, until at last all hope was gone, but finally Paul called the crew together and said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me in the first place and not left Fair Havens—you would have avoided all this injury and loss! But cheer up! Not one of us will lose our lives, even though the ship will go down, for last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul, for you will surely stand trial before Caesar! What’s more, God has granted your request and will save the lives of all those sailing with you.’ So take courage! For I believe God! It will be just as he said! But we will be shipwrecked on an island.”
The storm hurled them along for two weeks on the Adriatic Sea, and they were convinced they would soon be driven ashore; and dashed upon the rocks along the coast, so they threw out four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. Some of the sailors planned to abandon the ship and lower the lifeboat but Paul told the soldiers and crew that they would all die unless everyone stayed aboard. So the soldiers cut the ropes and let the lifeboat fall off. Paul begged everyone to eat. “You haven’t touched food for two weeks,” he said. “Please eat something now for your own good! For not a hair of your heads shall perish!” Paul took some hard baked bread loaf and gave thanks to God before them all and ate a piece of it. Suddenly their spirits lifted and they began eating, prisoners and soldiers and crew, all 276 of them, and they lightened the ship further by throwing the entire wheat cargo overboard.
When it was day, they didn’t recognize the coastline, but noticed a bay with a beach, and cutting off the anchors and leaving them in the sea, they lowered the rudders and raised the foresail but the ship hit a sandbar and ran aground and began to break apart.
The soldiers advised their commanding officer to let them kill the prisoners lest any of them swim ashore and escape. But Julius wanted to spare Paul, so he told them no. Then he ordered them all to jump overboard and make for land, some swimming and some clinging to planks and debris from the broken ship, and everyone escaped safely ashore!

They soon learned that they were on the island of Malta, and the people of the island were very kind to them, building a bonfire on the beach to welcome and warm them all in the rain and cold. But as Paul gathered an armful of sticks to lay on the fire, a poisonous snake, driven out by the heat, latched onto his hand, and when the people of the island saw it hanging there, they said to each other that Paul must have been a murderer who may have escaped drowning in the sea,but justice would not permit him to live!
But Paul shook off the snake into the fire and was unharmed, and all the people waited for him to begin swelling or suddenly fall dead, but when after a long time no harm came to him, they changed their minds and decided he was a god.

Publius, the governor of the island lived on a large estate and welcomed everyone to stay on the property and kindly fed them all for three days. Publius’s father had become ill with fever and a severe stomach ailment, so Paul went in and prayed for him, and laid hands on him, and the man was healed, then all the other sick people in the island came and received healing. And three months after the shipwreck when the time came to sail, people gave them gifts and provisions for their voyage. They were able to sail on to Rome on an Alexandrian ship called the ‘Twin Brothers’ which had wintered at the island.

When they disembarked at Puteoli in Italy, with Paul still under guard, they found some Christians, and stayed with them for seven days and then on the way to Rome Paul and his companions met more Christians at the Forum on the Appian Way, where he prayed with them and gave thanks to God. Paul then went on into Rome and when he arrived, he was permitted to live wherever he wanted to, but still under house arrest. Then three days after his arrival, he called together the local Jewish leaders and spoke to them and told them about the charges that The Jewish leaders accused him of in Caesarea, and of his defence and his innocence and also that he had appealed to Caesar.

Paul went on to tell them that it was because he believed that the Messiah Jesus had come that he was still under guard as a prisoner. They replied to Paul that they hadn’t heard any reports about him from those arriving from Jerusalem, nor had they received any letters from Judea. They said that they simply wanted to hear what he believed, and that the only thing they knew about these Christians was that they are being denounced everywhere! So Paul invited them to come to his house and they came in large numbers and he spoke to them all day and into the night about the Kingdom of God. He taught them about Jesus from the Scriptures, from the books of Moses and the books of the prophets, and there were many arguments, and only some believed.

Paul finally ended his meetings with them by quoting Isaiah.
‘Say to the Jews, “You will hear and see but not understand, for your hearts are too hard and your ears don’t listen and you have closed your eyes against understanding, for you don’t want to see and hear and understand and turn to me to heal you.’ (Isaiah 6:9)
And he told them that this salvation from God was available to the Gentiles too, and they would accept it. Paul lived for the next two years under guard in his rented house and welcomed all who visited him, telling them with all boldness about the Kingdom of God and about the Lord Jesus Christ; and no one tried to stop him, and later on during his time in Rome Paul wrote the second letter to Timothy in Ephesus and told him he was ready to go and be with the Lord.

2Timothy 4:6 I am prepared for my lifeblood to be poured out, and the time of being loosed from this life is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, and finally, the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the right and true Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have lovingly desired to see him.

What is the crown of righteousness and how was Paul able to receive that crown?
Righteousness means living in spiritual uprightness and truth before God.
He tells us that after fighting a good fight against spiritual darkness, and finishing the race with endurance, he had to keep the faith. and to do this he had to look to Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
And he tells us that we all are included - each in our own circumstances and each in our own spiritual struggles to receive our crowns also. He sums it up as being a spiritual struggle of faith because he knew that none of us could gain that spiritual uprightnes through our own works.
Not having my own righteousness, which is from my ability to perfectly obey the law, but the righteousness which is from God through faith in Christ.

All his religious life he had wanted to be spiritually upright, but in his natural human spirit he had always failed or fallen short, until when he experienced the power of the Spirit of the life of Christ within him – he saw he wasn’t alone in this struggle - he saw his only spiritual struggle was trusting in the Holy Spirit to change his heart. And he encourages us that we are not alone in this either, and that our only spiritual struggle is trusting in God to change our hearts so that we would desire to let the works of God flow through us. The Bible tells us what that work of spiritual uprightness and truth brings about in us … ‘the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance for ever’ (Isaiah 32:17).

The peace is within us – it doesn’t come from the circumstances, otherwise we could never have peace - we would always feel stranded and unsure and alone, but he tells us we will never feel alone and stranded. The crown of peace upon our head means that just by thinking of his nearness we have that quietness and assurance that he is near. Jesus said to us In Me you will have peace, but in the world you will have trouble. I have overcome the world - so be glad and joyful. ( John 16:33). His overcoming puts the world’s power underneath us. The world destroys peace among mankind and seeks the world’s power to overcome and put down all obstacles, but nothing that the world does to destroy peace can take the peace and assurance from our hearts and minds, because by faith we can experience being lifted up into his power - the power of that glorious crown of peace that awaits us.

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THE ENIGMA OF HOPE
We saw at the end of Acts chapter twenty-one, after the Turkish Jews tried to kill Paul and started a riot, the Roman centurion that rescued Paul from the angry mob gave Paul permission to speak to all the Jews from the steps of the temple of Jerusalem.
Acts 22:1 Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I offer my defence … Paul speaks in Hebrew to the Jews recounting his religious pedigree as a Pharisee and his dramatic conversion to becoming a follower of Jesus. The Jews fly into another rage and tear at their clothes and take Paul to the Roman barracks to be scourged with whips. And when Paul declares his Roman citizenship, the Roman Commander puts a stop to the scourging both because of Paul’s Roman citizenship and because he was confused by the behaviour of the Jews. He didn’t understand why Paul was being accused so he released him and commanded that Paul be tried by the chief priests and the council.

Chapter Twenty-three begins with the council trial and Paul declares to them all that his conscience is perfect before God, and this causes such offence to the high priest Ananias that he orders that Paul be slapped in the mouth, and Paul yells at him ‘God will slap you, you whitewashed wall. Who are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that?’ When Paul was told that Ananias was the high priest he apologised and said he didn’t know that, and that he knew the Scriptures that say you should not speak evil of your leaders. Paul had to gain control of the situation somehow so he quickly thought of what he would say to the council group next. Some of them were Pharisees and some were Sadducees and only the Pharisees believed in angels and the Spirit and the resurrection of the dead, so Paul said that as a Pharisee himself he was being put on trial for simply believing in the resurrection of the dead. This ended up with the Pharisees and the Sadducees fighting with one another because of the Sadducees’ unbelief in these things - and the Roman commander had to put Paul in prison for his own safety.
That night the Lord stood beside Paul and said, ‘Don’t worry, Paul; just as you have told the people about me here in Jerusalem, so you must also in Rome.’
The next day forty Jews took a vow to kill Paul and they persuaded the council to bring Paul back in for further questioning. Paul’s nephew heard of their ambush, so he tipped off the Commander who called two of his officers and ordered him to get four hundred and seventy soldiers and spearmen and mounted cavalry, including a horse for Paul, to get him safely to Governor Felix in Caesarea.

Chapter twenty-four starts with Felix organising a new trial before the Jewish leaders in Caesarea.
Ananias the High Priest arrives from Jerusalem with some of the Jewish leaders and the lawyer Tertullus, to make their accusations against Paul. They immediately weigh in on how Paul was a troublemaker, inciting the Jews throughout the entire world to riots and trying to defile the Temple and causing rebellion against the Roman Empire back in Jerusalem. They blame Paul for confusing the Roman commander who forcefully disrupted their punishment of Paul at that time and they even complained about the commander defending Paul’s appeal to be tried by Roman law.

Then it was Paul’s turn, and he told Felix that with all his knowledge of Jewish affairs for so many years he would know that he had never incited a riot in any synagogue and these men could never prove the things they accused him of doing. He then denies all the charges and repeats that all he did was to defend himself for believing that the dead will rise again. Felix knew that Christians didn’t start riots so he refused to condemn Paul and put him in custody instructing the guards to treat him gently and to allow his friends to visit him and bring him gifts to make his stay more comfortable. This was simply a political agenda of Felix who thought that he might gain financially by getting a bribe from Paul or his friends for Paul’s freedom.

In the meantime Paul gets a chance to preach to Felix and his Jewish wife Drusilla about Jesus, but when he got to talking about obeying God and the judgement that was to come Felix became terrified and sent Paul away, still giving audience to Paul from time to time with the hope of a bribe which never came. And because Felix wanted to gain favour with the Jews, he left Paul in prison for two years. Then Felix was succeeded as governor by Porcius Festus.

Chapter twenty-five starts with Festus arriving in Caesarea and making a quick visit to Jerusalem which he probably wished he hadn’t because the first thing now on his to-do list was to respond to the disgruntled Jewish leaders who were still very unhappy with the way Felix had handled the trial of Paul and they wanted another trial and they wanted Festus to bring Paul to Jerusalem (Their plan was to waylay and kill Paul). But Festus told them to come to Caesarea the following week. The Jews arrived from Jerusalem and began hurling accusations which they couldn’t prove, and Paul again denied all charges of having opposed Jewish laws or of desecrating the Temple or of rebelling against the Roman government. He said to Festus ‘I am innocent, I appeal to Caesar.’ Festus conferred with his advisors and then replied, “Very well! You have appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you shall go!”

A few days later King Agrippa arrived with his wife Bernice for a visit with Festus, who outlined to the king the case that the Jews had against Paul, and Festus said he was perplexed as to how to decide a case of this kind and that everything was still in the balance. He told Agrippa that he had asked Paul whether he would be willing to stand trial on these charges in Jerusalem, but that Paul had appealed to Caesar! Festus told Agrippa that he’d ordered Paul back to jail until he could arrange to get him to Rome. King Agrippa said that he would like to hear what Paul had to say, so Festus arranged another hearing and brought Paul to the court. When King Agrippa and Bernice arrived with great pomp and ceremony, Festus outlined the case against Paul to Agrippa and to the Jews and all the crowd.

Chapter twenty-six starts with Agrippa hearing Paul again preaching about Jesus as the Messiah who would suffer and die for the forgiveness of our sins and to rise from the dead, and to bring light to Jews and Gentiles alike. This was so annoying to Festus that he shouted at Paul and said “Paul, you are insane. All your studying has damaged your mind!” Paul replied, “I am not insane, Most Excellent Festus, and King Agrippa knows who I am and what I’ve done for it was not done in a corner, and King Agrippa, I know you believe in the prophets. (Agrippa was related to the Herodian dynasty which was Jewish)
Agrippa interrupted him and said ‘after saying what you just said do you expect me to become a Christian?” And Paul replied, I would hope that you and everyone here might become a Christian like me, except for being in chains.
Then the king, the governor, and Bernice, and all the others stood and left, and as they talked it over afterwards, they agreed, “This man hasn’t done anything worthy of death or imprisonment.” And Agrippa said to Festus, “We could have set him free - if only he hadn’t appealed to Caesar!”
Arrangements were finally made for Paul to sail to Rome under heavy guard.

Paul would likely have had a hope of converting Jews with the Gospel of grace, and converting governors and kings and emperors for the Kingdom of God that would perhaps influence all the nations of the world. Paul’s hope could have easily turned into disappointment in his dismal journey through those last few uninspiring chapters in Acts, with one contentious encounter after another, being resisted and rejected and mocked and scorned - but Paul had an even better kind of hope.

We saw in the previous study in Acts the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will - how that God sovereignly takes us in his way but graciously accompanies and leads us on our way. And this undergirds the new kind of hope that he writes about to us – the enigma of hope in the glory of God, which is far higher than our human idea of hope which looks into the future with an expectation of seeing things work out the way we hope they will because of our faith and faithfulness and good planning. We can’t live without hope, but the problem is our disappointments - so we live with hope and with disappointment because of not knowing what to expect or hope for with certainty. The only certain hope is the hope that God has for us. And Paul would certainly not be disappointed with his revelation of that hope to us which still speaks to us and to all the world two thousand years later.

Through Jesus we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God (God’s glory means God on display in our lives – not us). Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings (including our disappointments), knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces a hope, and that hope does not disappoint us, because God's love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:2-5)
God plants a vision and a hope inside each one of us – it is his vision and his hope for us, and it does not disappoint us if we give our heart and mind to embracing that new and certain hope.

It is what God is always himself achieving in us.
He is always bringing us into his likeness.
It is what God is always doing for us.
He is always enriching our lives with his love and with all spiritual blessings.
It is what God is always doing through us.
He is imparting that love and blessing on through us to all those in our world.

There is a way we can position ourself within God’s certain hope that overcomes the future uncertainties and the lost hopes of the past. Those things only make us look around inside our heads. Instead we look out and see another horizon in our life that lets us find a deeper and higher meaning in what God in his vast creative power is doing for us (Ecclesiastes 3:11- the word for eternity in their hearts is horizon).
The enigma Hope lets God do the hoping for us.
We rest in that certain hope and wait for that to come to us from God. And in that inner stillness we still move forward in faith with his word as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, but we do not create our own future with our own hope - God says that he creates that for us.
‘For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope’ (Jeremiah 29:11).

When David was in the depths of despair, which is the exact opposite to hope, all he could do was speak to his own soul - he looked inside but he got sick of looking in there, he just got tired of doing that. In there was all about lost hopes and disappointments and his failures, so he said to himself, from where does my help come, from where does my hope come - and he looked to the Lord – he looked to the hills, looking to the horizon. That is God's horizon from where everything begins to flow - even in the natural he knew that the hills - not like the desert of his soul - the hills had streams of water flowing - the hills had shade. Looking to the horizon lifted his soul above his disappointments, and he knew something was coming to him from that place. He lifted his eyes there with his thank you, with his gratitude, and began to magnify the Lord not the problems, not the disappointments, thank you Lord, Amen.

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GODS SOVEREIGNTY AND OUR FREE WILL 1

We read in the last half of Acts Nineteen how Paul sets up a Bible school called the school of Tyrannus and teaches both Jews and Greeks the Gospel there for two years, and God works powerfully through Paul, so that people who even touched Paul's clothing and handkerchiefs were healed. Many evil spirits came out of people through Paul’s ministry and many people who practiced witchcraft repented and burned their books of magic which were reported to be worth fifty thousand silver coins.
When Paul saw that God’s word was now sovereign and prevailing in Ephesus he decided to move on to Macedonia. Then he said, ‘from there I’m going to Jerusalem and then I'm off to Rome - I've got to get to Rome’. But before he left Ephesus, a man named Demetrius who manufactured and traded statues of the Ephesian goddess Artemis (Diana to the Romans) accused Paul’s teachings of destroying the glory of Artemis, whom the whole world worshipped and that her statues would end up a pile of rubbish. These accusations set the crowd off into a frenzy, and Paul and those with him were again in danger of being severely punished for this crime.

But the mayor of Ephesus finally quietened the mob and said, ‘This conduct is unworthy of Artemis, and these men have done nothing to harm either our temple or our goddess, and if Demetrius and his artisans have a complaint, they can take it to court and have it dealt with - we're putting our city in serious danger here, because Rome does not look kindly on rioters.’ With that, he sent everybody home.

Reading on now in Acts Chapter Twenty after Paul had just farewelled the people of Ephesus Paul travels to Greece and preaches there for three months. He discovers that the Jews are plotting again to take his life, so he sails over to Troas in northern Turkey and preaches there for seven days. On the final day he went to preach at their communion service.
Acts 20:7… He preached in an upstairs room until midnight! and as Paul spoke on and on, a young man named Eutychus, sitting on the windowsill, went fast asleep and fell three stories to his death below. Paul went down and took him into his arms. “Don’t worry,” he said, “he’s all right!” And he was brought back to life! They all went back upstairs and ate the Lord’s Supper together; then Paul preached another long sermon—so it was dawn when he finally left them!

Acts 20:17 Paul then sailed to Miletus, and he sent a message to the elders of the church at Ephesus which was not far away, asking them to come down to the boat to meet him. When they arrived he told them about the plots of the Jews against his life, and that he had never shrunk back from telling them the full counsel of the Word of God.
Paul tells them that he is being drawn irresistibly by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what awaited him, except that the Holy Spirit had told him in city after city that jail and suffering lay ahead of him, but he says that life is worth nothing unless he uses it for doing the work assigned to him by the Lord.
Verse 36. He knelt and prayed with them, and they wept aloud as they embraced him in farewell, sorrowing most of all because he said that he would never see them again.
We now come to Acts 21.
Acts 21:1 After parting from the Ephesian elders, Paul sailed straight to Cos and then sailed across to the harbor of Tyre, in Syria, where he went ashore, found the local believers, and stayed with them for a week. These disciples spoke through Holy Spirit to Paul and warned him not to go on to Jerusalem.
Then Paul went on to Caesarea and stayed at the home of Philip the Evangelist, one of the original seven deacons. He had four unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophecy.
And during his stay of several days, a man named Agabus, who also had the gift of prophecy, arrived from Judea and visited Paul - he took Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “The Holy Spirit declares, ‘So shall the owner of this belt be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem and turned over to the Romans.’ Hearing this, all the local believers and his traveling companions begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.
But he said, “Why all this weeping and trying to dishearten me! For I am ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem but also to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus.”

We saw earlier that Paul had felt drawn by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem.
When it was clear that he wouldn’t be dissuaded, they gave up and said, “God’s will be done.” So shortly afterwards Paul and his company packed their things and left for Jerusalem.

When Paul arrived at Jerusalem all the believers at gave them a warm welcome, and on the second day Paul met with James and the elders of the Jerusalem church, and he recounted the many things God had accomplished among the Gentiles through his work.
They praised God but then James said, “You know, dear brother, how many thousands of Jews have also believed, and they all believe they must continue to follow the Jewish traditions and customs. They have been told that you are against the laws of Moses, against our Jewish customs, and that you forbid the circumcision of their children. Now what can be done? For they will certainly hear that you have come.
It wasn’t long before some Jews visiting from Turkey saw him in the Temple and roused a mob against him, and they grabbed hold of him, yelling, “Men of Israel! Help! Help! This is the man who preaches against our people and tells everybody to disobey the Jewish laws. Paul was dragged out of the Temple, and immediately the gates were closed behind him. And as they set about to kill him, word reached the commander of the Roman garrison that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Paul declares his Roman citizenship to the Roman commander and in the following chapters through all kinds of hazards is escorted under an impressive military guard of two hundred soldiers, where he ends up preaching the Gospel to King Agrippa.

These encounters of Paul’s with the prophets and then with James and the Jewish elders that he had debated with before, and then with the lynch mob that wanted to kill him present us with some interesting options regarding whether Paul was in the will of God or not in going to Jerusalem. God’s sovereignty and our free will.
The first option is, were those prophets really speaking through the Holy Spirit?
The next option is, was Paul overriding the Holy Spirit and determined in his own will to get the true message home to the Jewish Christians about the freedom of the Gospel of grace? And had James forgotten or been pressured to water down the prophetic word about the Tabernacle of David back in Acts Chapter 15 about the freedom from Jewish laws?

The last option is, was there something bigger going on that only God knew about and had purposed, that nobody else knew about, including all the prophets, and James, and Paul’s companions and even Paul himself. We had seen in earlier accounts that when Paul felt he had a good idea about when he should act on something or where he should go and preach, like when he wanted to go into Asia, that the Holy Spirit prevented him. He sometimes humbly found out that God would block him and redirect him later on, with a clear word, after having Paul wait for something greater to come to pass that Paul would never have imagined, but in God’s good time.

Those prophets prophesied correctly by the Holy Spirit that Paul would be beaten up and locked up in chains in Jerusalem, assuming in their love and concern for Paul that God was telling him not to go to Jerusalem, and Paul could still accept that and say, ‘So what!’ Paul knew that part of his job description was to go through the sufferings of being resisted and rejected and opposed. There was something bigger going on that only God knew about and had purposed for Paul about his desire get to Rome that he could never have possibly foreseen.

It is that last option that teaches us that only God knows the end from the beginning in everything concerning his will and purpose for us, even though we are fully committed to do his will and even though he lets us hear from him, and even though he gives us a glimpse of certain things that will come to pass along the way. God finally brings his will to pass in his own remarkable way, and we are privileged in all our stumbling and bumbling and suffering, to be included in the outworking on earth of what God has planned to do from heaven.

People may debate the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. However, we see here that God sovereignly takes us in his way but graciously accompanies and leads us on our way.
This is how God is able to fold together and reveal to us the intricate parts of the unknowable mystery of His sovereignty and our free will. The Bible says that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who say yes to his invitation of living according to his purpose. (Ephesians 3:28)
God meets us there and sorts out the loose ends of our bumbling in such a way that both we and God are very happy with that. That is why just turning to him and looking in his direction is often enough to receive a mountain of faith if we hang in there. He is so far above and beyond us in his workings with us that our acceptance of his unlimited sovereignty and our severely limited capacity to discern the future becomes the peace within us that surpasses all understanding. It is no longer a paradox but a new kind of certainty.

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BAPTISM OF FIRE

After Paul’s ministry to the Greek philosophers of Athens in Chapter Seventeen Paul left Athens and went to Corinth and met Aquila and his wife Priscilla and lodged with them, working together with them at their common trade of tentmaking. Aquila and Priscilla had just arrived from Italy after being expelled from Rome along with many other Jews by the Roman Emperor Claudius Caesar. For many years the Jews had been exercising political activism and resistance against the Roman oppression wherever it was. This was apparent in the time of Jesus, who had been perceived as the Saviour from the Roman oppression in Judea for many Jews, and this is why so many were disappointed when he declared that his Kingdom was not of this world and told Pilate to crucify him. And the Romans finally killed or scattered over a million Jews and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD.

Then finally Silas and Timothy arrived at Corinth from Macedonia and joined Paul as he preached in the synagogues, but the Jews argued and totally contradicted him at every turn, so Paul left off preaching to the Jews and began preaching to the Corinthian Gentiles and a great many of them believed and were baptized. One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a dream and said to him: "Keep it up, and don't let anyone intimidate or silence you. No matter what happens, I'm with you and no one is going to be able to hurt you. I have many people with me in this city." That encouraged Paul and he stayed another year and a half, faithfully teaching the Word of God to the Corinthians. Then when it was time to leave Corinth Paul sailed with Aquilla and Priscilla across the Aegean Sea to Syria and then journeyed across to Ephesus which was one of the largest and most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean. Priscilla and Aquila decided to stay on there but Paul left them and travelled east to Antioch.

Then a man named Apollos came to Ephesus. He was a Jew, born in Alexandria in Egypt, and a very powerful speaker, accurate in everything he taught about Jesus up to a point, but he only went as far as the baptism of John. When Priscilla and Aquila came across Apollos and heard him preach, they perceived that something was lacking so they took him aside and told him the full story of the power of the Holy Spirit, and about the life of Jesus within. Apollos then left Ephesus and travelled to Corinth to preach there.

We now come to Chapter Nineteen, and it so happened that while Apollos was preaching in Corinth, Paul made his way down through the mountains back into Ephesus, and came across some disciples there, and must have perceived something lacking in the way they spoke about their faith in Jesus (presumably the same lack that Aquilla and Priscilla saw in Apollos). The first thing he said to them was, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They told Paul that they had never even heard of having the Holy Spirit within them, so Paul asked them how they were baptized, and they told him they had only received John's baptism.

He told them that John preached a baptism of radical life-change – a commitment in their hearts and minds to live for God and to purify their intentions - away from self and towards God. He said this to prepare people to be ready to receive the promised One coming after him, who was Jesus. John the Baptist told people that while he baptised with water the One to come was far greater than himself, John prophesied that ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He will separate the chaff from the wheat, burning the chaff with fire and storing away the good seed in the heart. The good seed is the word that Jesus speaks to us for faith to grow in our heart.

As soon as the Ephesian believers heard this - Paul laid hands on them and they were baptized in the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. From that moment on, they began to move in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit and to proclaim the greatness of God's mighty acts. But when Jesus brings us into the Baptism with the Holy Spirit it is not just about the power of the anointing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit or just about the love of God being spread abroad in our hearts - It is also about being baptised with the fire of the Holy Spirit for the purifying fire of God to burn out of us the self-glorifying and self-serving desires of our hearts.

In the Scriptures fire speaks of purifying, which is the loving chastisement of the Father upon our souls. It is not about punishment, which comes from a different motivation than chastisement. The motive for punishment is retribution and pay back whereas chastisement comes from the loving good will of Godly authority. Chastening develops character and integrity and steadfastness so that we can grow in God to live a settled and productive life of hope and faith, but the experience of chastening in our souls is still unpleasant and difficult to go through.

If people are deprived from the learning experiences of suffering through life’s challenges the growth of character and spiritual potential will not happen for them. We currently live in a progressive and permissive culture that lets young people invent their own values and avoid taking personal responsibility of many of life’s painful challenges. The ACT even introduced legislation last month for fourteen-year-old children to request euthanasia. Today’s teenagers are being taught that they can identify as being who or what they would like to be – male or female or something else – what about a cat? And the government legally protects them so that they can be as free and as happy as they think they will be.

Paul said that he was willing to go through whatever challenges of life he needed to, and to experience the weaknesses and limitations of his own humanity in order that he might know the power of the resurrection life of Jesus within him (Philippian 3:10-14). In other words, he saw this as sharing in the sufferings of Christ – He said bring it on Lord – I want to know why I’m here with you on this planet.

Peter spoke about how this Baptism of fire worked to grow us in our faith. He wrote ‘do not be surprised at the fiery trials that come upon you to test you, as though something strange is happening to you. Sharing in Christ's sufferings is cause for joy, just as it is when his glorious life is on display through you. (1Peter 4:12)

We have the choice to get all the useless and ungodly things out in the open before God as he reveals them to us so that we can find his mercy and grace. We let him prune off the deadwood branches and let him regrow us as productive branches drawing from his life, abiding in the vine. This Holy Spirit fire will progressively burn off the dead wood and stubble day by day and purify our hearts and heal and save our souls - or we can let it all pile up like deadwood behind us, but if we collaborate with the Holy Spirit in this burning off we enjoy the sweetness of his life within us here and now and also avoid suffering a fiery sense of loss when we stand before him at the end.
This is stated clearly by Paul. ‘No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ (That’s a prerequisite). Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone trashes (phtheir??) the temple of God, God will put the heat on them (phtheir??). For the temple of God is holy, and you are that temple. (1Corinthians 3:11)

What is this work that we build on this foundation of Jesus Christ that turns trash into gold?
The word ’work’ (Greek – ergon) is used in that passage of Scripture four times so it must be an important word to get that much emphasis. Strong’s Concordance defines it as anything accomplished by hand, art, industry, or mind - any product whatever. In other words, it is an endless list. In this Scripture it is not just about things being done by the mind and the heart and the hands and feet, but it is about the energy that is behind the work that involves having faith and finding grace and mercy in a loving partnership with God. Anything that we do together with God either for our own spiritual edification or as a blessing for someone else, will produce the gold of God’s spiritual energy and character that will endure forever. Knowing that Jesus is with us changes our fear into faith, our despair into hope, our indifference into compassion and our selfishness into generous love. That is the work - and each one of us can choose as far as we are able, in whatever we are doing, to say yes to God - for him to live and move and have his being in us.

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ONE BLOOD

Continuing the narrative in Acts seventeen from verse one we see that Paul and Silas and Timothy arrive at Thessalonica in the northern part of Greece, where Paul preaches in the synagogues as usual, teaching from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and many Jews and devout Gentile Greek men and women believed. But Paul and his company encountered the usual opposition from unbelieving Jews who stirred up a rowdy mob that attacked the house of Jason, Paul’s host in Thessalonica, and arrested Jason for shielding Paul whom they charged with ‘turning the world upside down’ because he taught that there was another God greater than Caesar. Jason finally helps Paul escape the city and Paul and Silas and Timothy travelled to Berea where their Gospel is welcomed by the discerning Bereans who searched out and verified the Scriptures that Paul taught them – and again many devout Greeks, both men and women believed. However, the angry Jews from Thessalonica heard that Paul was preaching his Gospel again in that place and they pursued Paul and his group all the way to Berea and stirred up another rowdy mob. So Timothy and Silas helped Paul escape by sea to Athens in the southern area of Greece, and told Paul to wait for them to come to him when they could.

All that troublesome threat and harassment turned out to be another providential arrangement by The Holy Spirit to get Paul to talk to the Greek philosophers in Athens who followed the teachings of the Epicureans and the Stoics. They all believed that there were gods but that the gods were merely symbolic of their preferred self-serving philosophies. The Epicureans espoused the search for happiness and pleasure and their gods were caricatures of their pleasure seeking. The Stoics on the other hand believed in detachment from Epicurean sensuality along with an indifference to pain or happiness which allowed them to focus on more important religious matters with their gods and idols. Every day Paul went out on the streets and talked with anyone who would listen about Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. Followers of both those Greek philosophies were curious about this new God of the resurrection that Paul spoke about, so they arranged for him to meet them at the Areopagus, which was an open hill area used as a court for political and religious discussion and debate. And they asked him about these strange new things he was bringing to their ears.

Paul had noticed an inscription to one of their gods that they called ‘the unknown god ‘and that god was the one that he decided to bring to their attention. Paul fully understood the Greek spirit, which was obsessed with seeking knowledge and wisdom, and he also understood their problem with their so-called gods. He knew that while they had defined and labelled gods for everything they wanted according to their philosophies and ideologies, their deepest human need to know God went totally unmet, and their unknown god had nothing to say about their self-serving beliefs and ideologies.

Paul the Greek scholar was familiar with that earnest search for God in his own mind and heart and he had come to know their so-called unknown God personally and he was able to bring those people the revelation that their unknown god was the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ. In debating with these Greek philosophers Paul sums up the history and the destiny of humanity from the very beginning of history and reveals the hidden answer to the search in every human heart which is to know God (Ecclesiastes 3:11 eternity in their hearts). He set about revealing God to them as the one who does not dwell in man-made temples, and who has no need for statues or idols, since he gives life to all living things. He revealed God as the one who is vitally interested in every human life, and who has created all people from one blood or from one created human life in Adam.

This was not the way that Paul preached to the Jews. Paul would only sum up their history from the time of Abraham and of once being slaves in Egypt and being delivered from slavery through Moses who gave them the law and the Commandments. He would tell the Jews that their promised Messiah for whom they had always been searching had arrived in the here and now in the person of Jesus Christ. He would tell them that God was in Christ forgiving them of their sin and joining them to God as a new Creation in Christ through the Holy Spirit, and the sad but happy fact was that some would believe him and become faithful followers, and some would not.

When Paul spoke to those men from Athens at the Aeropagus almost two thousand years ago he was speaking down through the ages into our world at this current time in history with its materialistic mindset and ideologies and its obsession with political and cultural and social identities that all compete for attention and prominence and power. Paul told them then as he tells us now that God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, for he is close to each one of us’ (Acts 17:28).

That means for us here today in this here and now life that we can find fulfillment in him as ‘God with us‘- Jesus, and in verse twenty nine he even quotes one of their own Greek writers who said, ‘In him we live and move and have our being, as we are his offspring. And Scripture goes on to say Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or something shaped by art and man's devising. In past times God may have tolerated man’s ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent from that ignorant and self-serving mindset and to put away false and imagined gods and ideologies and to believe in and worship God in Christ, and He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. (vs 31)"
Paul here presents God as the reality of all realties who now exists as the glorified person of Jesus Christ who has risen from the dead and who wants to exist and live within and through our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was when Paul preached the resurrection of Jesus that some mocked him. But others were open to this truth and said, ‘We will hear you again on this matter’. The Bible says that a number of faithful people became followers on that day. That is such a happy but sad reality about the acceptance and rejection of truth that we still see around us today.

Paul’s words to them and to us can turn this current world upside down once more - a sovereign God is in command of our lives, no matter where we live, what we are doing or what the surrounding circumstances are, and he has a purpose and destiny for each one of us in all those things to seek and to find and to know God. Paul said – ‘we are all of one blood’ - all of humanity in Adam - the entire global community of all nations and tribes and ideologies including the evils of terrorism that incite war to the death. Nonetheless as the Bible says about everyone on the earth in any and every circumstance of life that their reality of all realities is that they may search for God in the hope that they may find him ‘in God they live and move and have their being’ – even when they do not know it or even want to know it. That truth must not be left in the setting of an unknown god as - it is to be declared to everyone and lived out by those who will believe that their lives are hidden with Christ in God. Is this a fantasy of Paul’s – or is it indeed the reality of all realities for all people.

Paul also declared in his later writings to us something further to this, that it was no longer just him that was living in God - but that it was Christ who was living through him. And this is the mystery of an unlimited God being made manifest through a weak limited human being.
God once lived as pure Spirit Being in the Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in Heaven, and this pure Spirit Being was totally unlimited in all respects. But when Christ became incarnated and born from above in the person of Jesus into the earth God changed his Being from pure Spirit Being and became embodied through a limited human being in Jesus Christ who said he was ‘the fullness of the godhead bodily’. Jesus told people ‘If you have seen me you have seen the Father’ then Jesus died and rose again.

And the Father and the Son then sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts as the Spirit of the glorified resurrected human Jesus so that we can believe like Paul that God lives in us as Father and Son and Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:19). We may well hunger and desire that we can live our lives through Christ but how much more must we realize that God yearns and desires to live the fulness of his Godhead life through us. It is not our limited humanity that stops God from having his Being embodied in the earth as well as in heaven. It is our unbelief that God could or would do such a thing – but, We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the glory will be of God and not of us’ (2Corinthians 4:7).
Paul presents us with the reality of all realities, that by faith we can embody and impart the life and presence of God into our world around us. That is the reality sitting deeper than the material reality that we see and touch with our physical senses. We may be sitting in our car held up in traffic and that may appear to us as our frustrating or tedious reality that affects our thinking and our emotions. But there is another reality beneath that one, which is the fact that we are going somewhere with a sense of purpose, perhaps to get to work, or to meet up with other people, or to have our car serviced, or to arrive at an appointment. But the reality of all realities that lies beneath that is that we are embodying the living God, who is where we are and who desires to do what he knows will bring his will and his power and his love into the blessing of what we do. This becomes our knowable reality as we believe in the activity of his good will that graces that moment.
As we share communion today we are not simply partakers of the one blood from Adam but are partakers by faith of the one blood of Jesus Christ. The cup we drink is the blood of the New Covenant that gives us new life. The bread is his body, and we can embody that truth. As we sit together in the grace of that communion moment we can realise the reality of all realities that we embody the father, Son and Holy Spirit and can bring that reality into the lives of those in our world as we go out from this place.

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THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

We are continuing in the narrative of Silas now becoming Paul’s partner instead of Barnabas as Paul goes on his second missionary journey back to Lystra and Iconium

We now read in Acts Chapter sixteen and verse one that Paul and Silas go to Lystra where they meet a new Christian named Timothy, who had a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father. Paul was so impressed with Timothy that he asked him to join them on their journey.
They set off together and tried to go into Asia Minor but the Holy Spirit told them not to, so they travelled through Galatia deciding to head north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Holy Spirit said no. Paul then had a vision in a dream where he saw a man over in Macedonia in Greece, pleading with him, ‘Come over here and help us’, and it became clear to Paul then that God was sending them to preach the Gospel in Philippi, a Roman colony just inside the Macedonian border. When they got there, they preached to some women by a riverbank where they would come to pray and worship God each Sabbath. One of the women was named Lydia from Thyatira, who was a purple cloth merchant and who opened her heart to all that Paul was saying. She became baptized along with all her household and asked Paul and the others to stay at her house as her guests.

Then one day as Paul and all the others were heading down to have prayer beside the river, they met a demon-possessed slave girl, who was a fortune-teller that earned a lot of money for her managers, and she followed along behind Paul shouting, “These men are servants of God, and they have come to tell you how to have your sins forgiven”. She did this for a few days until Paul became so distressed with this that he turned and commanded a religious spirit to come out of her, and when it left, her managers realized that their hopes of wealth were now shattered. These influential managers grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them before the judges at the marketplace for upsetting the Roman peace. The judges ordered them to be stripped and beaten with whips, then thrown into prison, and the jailer was threatened with death if they escaped, so he put them into the inner dungeon with their feet shackled to the ground.

Just before midnight, Paul and Silas decided to sing praises to the Lord, and the other prisoners were listening, and suddenly at the midnight hour there was a great earthquake; the prison was shaken to its foundations, all the doors flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open, and assuming that his prisoners had escaped, he drew his sword to kill himself. But Paul yelled to him, “Don’t do it! We are all here!” Trembling with fear, the jailer called for lamps and ran to the dungeon and fell down before Paul and Silas. He brought them out and begged them, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

They replied, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, and your entire household.” Then the jailer took them to his home quarters and cleaned up their whiplashed backs. Paul then told him and all his household the truth of the Gospel and the jailer believed - and he and all his family were baptized. He provided a meal for all of them, and they joyfully praised God together as believers that very night.
The next morning the judges sent police officers over to the jail to order the jailer to let them go, so the jailer told Paul they were free to leave, but Paul would have nothing of it. He explained that if they had been publicly beaten and jailed without trial as Roman citizens there was no way they were going to leave secretly, so he demanded that the judges come themselves and release them. The police officers reported this to the judges, who feared for their lives when they heard Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, so they came to the jail and begged them to go and brought them out publicly, pleading with them to leave the city. Paul and Silas then returned to the home of Lydia, where they met with the believers and preached to them once more before leaving town, knowing that this would have made the local Christians feel more secure after they had left the city.

There is a lesson of faith we can learn from this account of Paul and Silas as they were in chains in the prison cell at the midnight hour. The way they acted teaches us about how to respond when we are in circumstances that are beyond our control. It is about expecting the unexpected by trusting God that he is supernaturally at work for us. Paul had firmly set his heart on doing the best that he could to fulfill what God wanted him to do on this journey and he had been guided by the Holy Spirit as he went forward. Twice he had decided to go in a certain direction, and he was told by the Holy Spirit in some special way not to go that way. He was even given the dream of the man from Macedonia, and all this would have given Paul great reassurance.

So it would have been logical for Paul to think that by going to Philippi as he was directed by the Holy Spirit that everything would fall into place when he got there and that there would be a move of God for the salvation of the people. But God had a number of unexpected surprises waiting for him. This is the first lesson that we can learn – we cannot presume that God will give us a magic carpet ride into seeing his supernatural work in action – there will be trials of faith and patience.

For example, the way this worked out for Paul was that things went pleasingly well for a while as Lydia gets saved and baptized and then more people get touched by God and then suddenly everything starts to go shockingly bad. It couldn’t have gone worse for Paul and Silas to end up being arrested and whipped and imprisoned and shackled in chains against a wall, and perhaps awaiting a death sentence.

Then after learning about trials of faith we can learn another lesson from Paul and Silas. For us it would be like everything going so bad that the midnight hour arrives where things could not become any darker, and where grimly ask ourselves ‘what do I do now? - there seems to be no hope’ But the lesson to learn here is that that this is when we should have the most hope. This is when there’s nothing we can do but be still and see the salvation of our God. This is where we move away from being conscious of what the world is doing to us and move towards being conscious of what God is doing for us. This shift of our thinking is vital for any faith transformation of our soul.

If Silas would have asked Paul that question – ‘what do we do now?’ he would have heard only one answer. Paul would have said ‘There’s only one thing to do Silas – we start praising the Lord because only he can do the supernatural work to get us out of this – so let’s just praise the Lord with all of our hearts – Hallelujah!’
Paul knew that God wanted to show them his sovereign rule over everything that was happening and to show them his mighty acts in their midnight hour. Paul would have been reminded of Moses at the Red sea and Joshua at the walls of Jericho, and David telling his soul to magnify the Lord in his fear and distress.
And finally, there are a number of Scriptures that mention the midnight hour and its end time significance about the darkest hour having to come before a new dawn can break.
We will look at three of these Scriptures (among a number of others) where the the midnight hour Scriptures always fall into one of these these three contexts, which are a)Times of judgement between good and evil, b) a bride being prepared for her bridegroom and c) times of shakings where prisoners get set free from darkness and find salvation.

The first example of a midnight hour situation is in Exodus chapter twelve when God pronounces judgement and says that at the midnight hour he would pass through the land of Egypt and strike all the firstborn in the land and execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt.

The second example of a midnight hour situation is about the time when some bridesmaids go to sleep while the bridegroom is being delayed, and at midnight a cry is heard: 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' Some of the bridesmaids have no oil in their lamps and can’t go out to meet him but the wise ones do – speaking of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. (Matthew 25:6)

The third example of a midnight hour situation is the one that we have just read about in the book of Acts with Paul and Silas where God supernaturally sets people free from bondage and where they can sing ‘my chains fell off I’ve been set free I once was blind but now I see’.

We do not know the times and the seasons of God but there are certain times in history when the times are the darkest and God gives the world its warnings, and he gives his Church his message of hope for setting people free. We are certainly in a dark time of history and God is bringing many things of the world into the light for them to be seen and judged for what they are. He is also encouraging his church to become more pure of heart and prepared as a bride for his Son. He is also bringing light into the darkness for the blind to see and he is shaking all things and opening prison doors for spiritual chains to fall off people so that they can be set free.

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GOD ISRAEL PAUL US
We saw in the first part of Acts fifteen from verses one to eighteen last week how James interpreted the prophecy of Amos concerning the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David. That prophecy foretold the future history of Israel and also that there will be a restoration of the house of God’s presence in the earth called the Tabernacle of David – and also called the church of the firstborn by Paul in Hebrews. This would be a place of faith in Christ in the liberty of the Spirit for all of mankind that would now be gathered to God from all over the world.

I now want to comment on Acts 15 from verse 19 to verse 30. (The Scriptures are at the end of these notes). After James had declared the prophesy of Amos concerning the Tabernacle of David he speaks on behalf of the Jewish elders and apostles including Paul and Barnabas, to the congregation, and he summarises the decision of the council regarding salvation as being through grace and faith in Christ and that they should not make the Gentiles obey the Jewish laws. However, he made two exceptions that concerned the Jewish food laws, and it was only later on that Paul was able to teach and to guide both Jewish and gentile Christians on how to honour God in these issues according to their faith and also to their conscience before God. Paul explained it was about loving one another and being sensitive to not offend the conscience of others who are weaker in their faith. The story continues from verse 30.

Paul and Barnabas leave Jerusalem along with Silas and Judas and report to the Christians in Antioch about the results of the council and their new freedom in the faith, because of the prophecy of Amos. Everybody in Antioch was happy with that, and it was decided that Judas and Silas, who had stayed for a while and had strengthened the church there with powerful preaching, should be sent back to Jerusalem. But Silas decided to stay on in Antioch (vs.34).

Paul then suggested to Barnabas that they should go back to Turkey and visit the cities where they had preached before and see how the new converts were going. Barnabas agreed with this and said that he wanted to take John Mark with him, but Paul disagreed because he thought that John mark had let them down by deserting them in Pamphylia earlier on. Their heated contention over this was so great that they parted company from that time on. Barnabas took John Mark with him to Cypress while Paul took Silas with him to Syria and Cilicia to strengthen those churches, and the Antioch church blessed their journey.

There is another account of this story which fills in some gaps. Paul writes his personal account in the Book of Galatians about his time at the council at Jerusalem with James which we have just read about. His account starts in Galatians two from verse one through to verse eleven. He was certainly not impressed with some of the legalistic church leaders. ‘They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. But we did not listen to them for a single moment’, And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching.’ He ends his account of the council meeting by saying ‘they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews.’

He then continues from Galatians 2:12-20 recounting how that a little while after that council meeting, when he and Barnabas were back in Antioch Peter visited the Antioch church and seemed to join in and approve of the freedom of their faith, until when later on some Jewish Christian friends of James also visited the church. Peter then stopped eating with the gentile Christians for fear of what they would tell James because of his ruling about Christians having to obey Jewish food laws, and this behaviour of Peter highly offended Paul.

It is interesting that this account of Paul’s of the council meeting and Peter’s visit to Antioch soon after and his offensive legalistic behaviour was not mentioned by Luke in this chapter of Acts. Perhaps he refrained from mentioning it out of respect for Peter, even though he does mentions in Acts 15 the disagreement of Paul and Barnabas. This is what Paul wrote about Peter’s visit.
Galatians 2:12-20 When Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don’t bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws. But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say; and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter’s example, though they certainly knew better.

Paul continues his rebuke of Peter and Barnabas in Galatians 2:14
‘When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them? You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners, and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith—and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them.”

Paul continues to contend with Peter and Barnabas about their disappointing behaviour in front of the Christians in Antioch and concludes by saying,
I am offending God if I start rebuilding the old system I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws, for it was through reading the Scriptures that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favour by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ. I have been crucified with Christ: and it is no longer I that live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’

Paul’s teaching allowed the Gentile world to hear the full Gospel of grace and truth, not only regarding the freedom from the shackles of legalism and Jewish tradition, but to give us entrance into the life-giving Spirit of Jesus. This is the faith we contend for, as the goal of our faith - the salvation and healing of our souls and our living in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

(before I finish I have more to say about … )We will read again the prophecy of Amos that James declared to the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem concerning rebuilding the Tabernacle of David.
Acts 15:16 ‘I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins and set it up; So that the rest of mankind may seek the LORD, even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the LORD who reveals his plans made from the beginning.
When James quotes Amos he is saying that there will be a restoration of the house of God’s presence in the earth called the Tabernacle of David. This would be a place of faith in Christ in the liberty of the Spirit for all of mankind that would now be gathered to God from all over the world. He says that the rejection of God by Israel in the days of Amos is the same as their current rejection of Jesus. Mankind was now being welcomed to dwell with God in this new spiritual house called the Tabernacle of David until Jesus would return to the earth.

Jesus also said this prophetically about Israel and about us ‘I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and I am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And I have other sheep which are not of this fold; I must also bring them in, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. John 10:14
This prophecy of Amos goes on to speak about the scatterings of Israel as a nation and also speaks about a permanent final regathering of Israel (verses 11-15). There were two scatterings since Amos – one was when Israel was taken captive in Babylon for seventy years and then regathered, as recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And the last scattering was when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD - not long after James makes this declaration. Isaiah also prophesies about two regatherings since Amos, and that Israel would not remain scattered but finally be gathered again ‘a second time’ (the final regathering actually occurred in 1948).

We will read the prophecy of Isaiah. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria and from Egypt, and from Pathros and from Cush and from Elam and from Shinar and from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. 12. And He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:11-12 (AV)

The nation of Israel was re-established in 1948 with Jews being drawn back to Israel from all over the world and has remained and prospered miraculously against impossible odds – and is there to stay until Jesus returns. We are witnessing this phenomenon at this moment as uncomfortable as it is to see Israel in Old Testament warfare again, but I pray that Hamas will return the hostages and that innocent lives will be spared on both sides, and I pray particularly for Israel the prayer of Paul’s from Romans 9 that all Israel will come to salvation through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Acts 15:18-40 That is what the Lord says, who reveals his plans made from the beginning.
“And so my judgment is that we should not insist that the Gentiles who turn to God must obey our Jewish laws, except that we should write to them to refrain from eating meat sacrificed to idols, from all fornication, and also from eating unbled meat of strangled animals. For these things have been preached against in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
Then the apostles and elders and the whole congregation voted to send delegates to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, to report on this decision. The men chosen were two of the church leaders—Judas (also called Barsabbas) and Silas.
This is the letter they took along with them:
“From: The apostles, elders and brothers at Jerusalem.
“To: The Gentile brothers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. Greetings!
“We understand that some believers from here have upset you and questioned your salvation, but they had no such instructions from us. So it seemed wise to us, having unanimously agreed on our decision, to send to you these two official representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul. These men—Judas and Silas, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ—will confirm orally what we have decided concerning your question.
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden of Jewish laws on you than to abstain from eating food offered to idols and from unbled meat of strangled animals, and, of course, from fornication. If you do this, it is enough. Farewell.”
The four messengers went at once to Antioch, where they called a general meeting of the Christians and gave them the letter. And there was great joy throughout the church that day as they read it.
Then Judas and Silas, both being gifted speakers, preached long sermons to the believers, strengthening their faith. They stayed several days, and then Judas and Silas were encouraged to return to Jerusalem taking greetings and appreciation to those who had sent them. But Silas decided to stay on in Antioch. Paul and Barnabas also stayed on at Antioch to assist several others who were preaching and teaching there.
Several days later Paul suggested to Barnabas that they return again to Turkey and visit each city where they had preached before, to see how the new converts were getting along. Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark. But Paul didn’t like that idea at all, since John Mark had deserted them in Pamphylia. Their disagreement over this was so sharp that they separated. Barnabas took John Mark with him and sailed for Cyprus, while Paul chose Silas and, with the blessing of the believers, left for Syria and Cilicia to encourage the churches there.

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FREEDOM OF FAITH
Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers that unless they adhered to the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision, they could not be saved. Paul and Barnabas argued and discussed this with them at length, and finally the believers sent them to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local men, to talk to the apostles and elders there about this question. 4. Arriving in Jerusalem, they met with the church leaders and Paul and Barnabas reported on what God had been doing through their ministry. But then some of the men who had been Pharisees before their conversion declared that all Gentile converts must be circumcised and be required to follow all the Jewish customs and ceremonies.

This was a history changing moment – The first great Church Reformation - from one Covenant to another. The biggest issue for the Jewish Christians was that Gentile Christians should get circumcised, as that was the seal of the Hebrew Covenant through Abraham - but the sign and seal of the New Covenant through Jesus was the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of liberty and freedom (Ephesians 1:13).

1. So the apostles and church elders set a further meeting to decide this question. After long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you long ago to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles so that they also could believe. God, who knows men’s hearts, confirmed the fact that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he gave him to us. He made no distinction between them and us - he purified their hearts through faith, just as he did ours. And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Don’t you believe that we are all saved the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus?
   There was no further discussion, and everyone now listened as Barnabas and Paul told them about the miracles God had done through them among the Gentiles, and when they had finished, James took the floor. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people called by his name (Christians). And this fact of Gentile conversion agrees with what the prophets predicted from the prophet Amos:
   ‘I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, all the Gentiles who are called by My name (Christians), says the LORD who does all these things.'

God had told Amos in his day that because of Israel’s rejection of God they would be judged and here James is likening Israel’s rejection in the days of Amos to Israel’s rejection of Jesus at the current time and he is saying that the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David signifies the rest of mankind being now invited to become God’s people in the earth.
Gentiles were coming into God’s new Spiritual House of the Church – a new temple or tabernacle, and the Church would soon become a totally Gentile Church for a determined period of history, as quoted by Jesus ‘until the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24 – in troubled times), and also quoted by Paul ‘My brothers I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery: a partial blindness has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, (Romans 11:25)
Israel is back in their physical territory today (in ongoing conflict) but they await God’s time to be brought into his spiritual territory of faith. We are in the same waiting time now, but it is for God’s final number of Gentiles to be saved. Only God knows that time.

When we read of how the Tabernacle of David was set up in First Chronicles Chapter fifteen, it was simply a tent on top of Mount Zion and it became the dwelling place for the Ark of the Covenant, which had always represented God’s abiding presence among the nation of Israel. The Ark of the Covenant was first fashioned in the wilderness at God’s command and was placed in the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle of Moses. However, when Israel sought to presumptuously use the ark to their own ends by taking the ark into battle, they soon learned that they had violated God’s order concerning the holiness of God’s presence, and the ark was lost to the Philistines and the glory departed from Israel. (1 Sam 4). Saul then became king and had ignored the ark all through the time of his reign. (1 Chronicles 13:2-3).
The Philistines, enemies of God, found that the ark brought judgements upon them and not blessing. They cast off the ark and sent it to the people of Beth-shemesh, and further judgement came upon the people there. The ark was then discarded at Kiriath-jearin, where it remained for 20 years. (1 Sam 5 - 8). After this time, David prayed that he might find place for the ark I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.” (Psalm 132:4)

“And David gathered all Israel together in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the Lord unto his place, a tent on Mt Zion, which he had prepared for it. “So the leaders of Israel took the Ark to Jerusalem with shouts of joy, the blowing of horns and trumpets, the crashing of cymbals, and loud playing on the harps and zithers. But as the Ark arrived in Jerusalem, David’s wife Michal, the daughter of King Saul, felt a contempt for David as she watched from the window and saw him dancing like crazy (1 Chron 15:1). Michal rebuked David for this and he said ‘I did this before The Lord who chose me above your father (Saul) and I was celebrating before the Lord’. Michal was judged by God for this.
The ministry of praise and worship at this time was released in a measure never before seen in Israel. It was at this time that most of the Psalms were written, from which we sing many songs of praise and worship. David took the holiest of all things - the ark of the covenant, the presence of God in the Holy Place of the tabernacle of Moses, into his Tabernacle/tent on top of Mt Zion.
This means that the tabernacle of David was a temporary dwelling place for God until another dwelling place was fully prepared – the temple of Solomon. There would be no going back to the Tabernacle of Moses from the tabernacle of David. So when James quoted Amos saying that the Christian Church would now rebuild the Tabernacle of David he was prophesying that a new era of time had now begun for the Church to express the freedom of faith that flow from the indwelling presence of The Lord.

We are now in that era as the church that is purposed to live with a conscious sense of the presence of God expressing the freedom and liberty of the spirit like David did. We remain in this expression of the freedom of faith until we dwell together in the new eternal Tabernacle of God in Heaven. ‘And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people…for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. (Revelation 21:3,22)

Paul tells us that we are the Church of Mt. Zion where David’s tabernacle dwelt. He tells us that we are not at Mt. Sinai which speaks of the Law and blood sacrifices. Paul is saying that this Church is a Heavenly Church on earth living in the power of God’s Spirit and in communion with the saints in Heaven. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the gathering of enumerable celebrating angels; and to the church of the Firstborn enrolled in Heaven - So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:22)
Many Protestant churches say the Apostles' Creed, saying that they believe in the communion of saints, which is understood to mean the whole community of faithful followers of Christ, living and dead, past, present and future.
The spiritual dwelling place of God in the earth is his church who live by faith. We are no longer bound to the traditions and rituals of man but released into the freedom of the Spirit (some Christians appear to think that embracing Jewish culture and tradition makes them more like Jesus – not so), and even though there can be outward Christian practises, these practices are not holy of themselves. These practices can only describe the work of God within our hearts of faith, like baptism and Communion where we bring to remembrance our oneness of a shared life with Jesus, and life-giving works of faith -like worship and prayer and the teaching of the word and our discipleship of following Jesus as the church of the firstborn, which is why Paul goes on to say.
‘So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:25)
This encourages us to know that Heaven is always waiting to speak to earth, and no person can speak to us from Heaven other than Jesus. So let us expect to hear him speaking to us in our daily lives. That is why the Holy Spirit was sent, to tell us what Jesus is saying to us.

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THE FIVE SENSES OF THE SPIRIT

Just as we have five physical senses we also see those senses mirrored spiritually as spiritual senses of blessing and faith. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro…I have stretched out my hand to you…These Old Testament sayings were from a pure Spirit God without a body (Yet to come in the form of Jesus)

THE SENSE OF SMELL
Philippians 4:18 I have received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God.
2Corinthians 2:15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are dying on the inside (perishing).
The sense of smell is linked to the part of the brain called the olfactory system which affects our emotions and our memory. The blessing of God to us through the spiritual sense of smell is through adding a richness and a depth to our spiritual perceptions and our remembrance of certain occasions. The Bible says that our praise and prayers rise up to him like a sweet incense whereby we can bless God (Psalm 141).

He is also blessed when we give to another person sacrificially and bless them in some way in their time of need as Paul was blessed by the Philippian church. That brings Heaven’s sweetness to the earth. Paul also says that God is blessed by the fragrance of Christ living through us that in certain ways touches the lives of people whose souls are being saved, and also in other ways touches those who are dying on the inside as we speak life into the death of their inner lives, in order to draw them into life.

THE SENSE OF SIGHT
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
Jesus is telling people here that when people have a blameless heart of trust in the truth of God being with them in every circumstance of their lives, that they will see God in those things even if those things are difficult and problematic. This allows people to live in the hope of God working all things together for good and not giving up in despair that he has overlooked them or forgotten them.

THE SENSE OF HEARING
Romans 10:17 faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
2Corinthians 10:5 bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Hearing is not just a function of knowing what a person is saying, but it is an acknowledgment of who is saying it, and having a willingness to let what Jesus says to guide our lives and transform us.

THE SENSE OF TASTE
Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
When we taste of the spiritual things of God that have uprightness and wisdom and mercy that he has prepared for us to eat and drink of, they bring about fulfilment and strength in our spiritual lives. We might have appetites for things that are not good for us but the things that God has prepared for us are always good and they are what we will begin to develop a hunger and thirst for. Our hunger for righteousness means that we want our will and our choices to be in alignment with the wisdom and knowledge of God. Our thirst for righteousness is for our heart and emotions to be in alignment with the desires of his heart for truth and love and mercy, and that means being satisfied with his hearts desires for us not just being gratified in our souls by what we can get for ourselves.

THE SENSE OF TOUCH
Luke 6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.
Habakkuk 3:4 He had power flashing from His hand, and in his hand was the hiding of his power.
When the people drew near to Jesus to be close to him they were being drawn into the presence of God, and being in the presence of God brings about the touch of God. God wants us to know that he has his hand upon our lives, and the Jesus releases the power and the love and the healing touch that is hidden in his hand. So today… Let us draw near to God with a true heart and full assurance of faith… and let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works, and let us not neglect our gatherings together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. (Hebrews 10:22-24)

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DEATH TO LIFE

Paul and Barnabas continue on their journey without John Mark, and they travelled down to Iconium and preached in the synagogue there, and many of the Jews and the Greeks believed.

ACTS 14:1. At Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went together to the synagogue and preached with such power that many—both Jews and Gentiles—believed.
We will read a little further on (vs 21 below) that when Paul returns to Iconium on a later journey he finds that Timothy was one of the first fruits of that original ministry in Iconium, where Timothy lived with his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois. (Acts 16:2, 2Tim 3:10)

1. But the Jews who spurned God’s message stirred up distrust among the Gentiles against Paul and Barnabas, saying all sorts of evil things about them, but the Lord proved their message was from him by giving them power to do great miracles. But the people were divided.
   And when Paul and Barnabas learned of a plot to incite a mob of Gentiles, Jews, and Jewish leaders to attack and stone them, they fled for their lives, going to the cities of Lycaonia, Lystra, Derbe, and the surrounding area, and preaching the Good News there.

There did not seem to be a definite strategy of the spreading of the word of God. It was what it was, so they were led by The Holy Spirit to the surrounding regions in Lystra and Derbe. God was not going to allow severe persecution to stop his purpose and power from happening no matter what appeared to be happening to them - as we shall shortly see in a most dramatic and compelling way.

In the meantime…
8. At Lystra they came upon a man with crippled feet who had been that way from birth.
He was listening as Paul preached, and Paul looked intensely at him and perceived he had faith to be healed. So Paul called to him, “Stand up!” and the man leaped to his feet and started walking!
The witness of faith – This is an example of how faith meets faith. Paul firstly had faith that the power of God was present and active. While he was looking at that crippled man with eyes of faith, that man was looking to God with eyes of faith. Their faith met and God knew the man’s prayer and Paul spoke God’s answer - and the man stood up and walked. The same thing happened to Jesus when a woman was looking to Jesus in her need believing she could be healed and reached out and touched his garment, and faith met faith. Jesus felt the healing power flow from him to the woman – faith can perceive faith.

When the listening crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted (in their local Hittite dialect), “These men are gods in human bodies!” They decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Jupiter, and that Paul, because he was the chief speaker, was Mercury! The local priest of the Temple of Jupiter brought them cartloads of flowers and prepared to sacrifice oxen to them at the city gates before the crowds.
14. But when Barnabas and Paul saw what was happening, they ripped at their clothing in dismay and ran out among the people, shouting, “Men! What are you doing? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them,
16 who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own way. Nevertheless He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” So Paul and Barnabas could scarcely restrain the people from sacrificing to them!

The myths and legends of the Greek gods were all about strange ‘beings of renown’ who assumed human form whenever they wished and visited the earth. This was also a belief amongst the Egyptians and also the Hindus. (See Gen 6:4)

Paul was preaching here to people of an ancient culture, so they spoke about the God of Creation who controlled all the elements of the earth and worked them together according to his design and purpose. This was different to preaching to Jews, where he would speak about the Jewish patriarchs like Abraham and Moses and David, reminding them of their covenant as a Nation with God. His emphasis here to these pagans of Lystra was similar to how he preached to the Greeks in Athens on the Hill of Mars. (Acts 17) where he spoke about the God of creation who determined the boundaries and bloodlines and appointed times and purposes of all the nations of the earth.

1. Yet only a few days later, some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium (where they had fled from) and incited a mob of people to stone Paul to death. They then dragged Paul out of the city deeming him to be dead (nomizo – to deem something to be what it appears to be - the rule of action prescribed by reason - it is what it is). 20However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up (anistemi - to raise up from the dead – as it was said of Lazarus and Jesus ) and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.

2. After preaching the Good News there and making many disciples, they returned again to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, where they helped the believers to grow in love for God and each other. They encouraged them to continue in the faith in spite of all the persecution, reminding them that they must enter into the Kingdom of God through many tribulations.
   Paul and Barnabas also appointed elders in every church and prayed for them with fasting, turning them over to the care of the Lord in whom they trusted.

3. Then they travelled back through Pisidia to Pamphylia, preached again in Perga, and went on to Attalia. Finally they returned by ship to Antioch, where their journey had begun and where they had been committed to God for the work which was now completed.
   Upon arrival they called together the believers and reported on their trip, telling how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles too. And they stayed there with the believers at Antioch for a long while.

Looking at that stoning to death event again… nomizo and anistemi in verse 19.
This could have been the time that Paul left his body, as he recounts later in a letter to the Corinthians. ‘This boasting is all so foolish but let me go on. Let me tell about the visions I’ve had, and revelations from the Lord. Fourteen years ago…
(This event in the Book of acts was around the time between 39 and 44 AD and when he wrote the second letter to the Corinthians it was around 56 to 58 AD –so there’s fourteen years in there somewhere)
… I was taken up to heaven for a visit. Don’t ask me whether my body was there or just my spirit, for I don’t know; only God can answer that. But anyway, there I was in paradise, and heard things so astounding that they are beyond a man’s power to describe or put in words (and I am not allowed to tell them to others).
On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses— though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me in my life and my message.
I will say this: because these experiences and revelations were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up in pride by them; so I was sent a messenger from Satan as a thorn in my flesh, to hurt and bother me and pierce my pride’ (2 Cor 12:1-7).

So for Paul he would have understood that the power of Jesus was not only about resurrection – it was about death and resurrection. Just because someone believes in the doctrine of resurrection it does not necessarily mean that the power of resurrection is flowing in that person’s life. That power is expressed in us when we are challenged to die to something that we realise is working death in us. We can choose to die to what that is in our body and soul and rise up in the life of Jesus working in us.

When Jesus died on the cross he knew that he would be resurrected and he told people. Jesus did not and could not fight for his life on the cross. He had always surrendered control over his own life overcoming the struggle of the soul and the spirit and we see his willing surrender in the garden of Gesthemane, and he stayed alive until the life of his spirit left his dead body. He committed his spirit into his Father’s hands and when he had done that he was resurrected. His body was raised up (anistemi)on the third day but he was given resurrection life in his spirit when he committed his spirit into the Father’s hands. 'into Your hands I commit My spirit (paratithemi – to place alongside). His life was not lost but placed alongside Father’s life.

The spirit life of humanity was joined to the resurrection life of God through Jesus.
Colossians 3:3 you are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
How can Paul say ‘you are dead’? – How can he say ‘dead to sin and alive to God’ (Romans 6:11) It is because Jesus became our death and our resurrection – all we do is receive repentance to life and have faith in his life working within us. It is called the simplicity of Christ – so simple yet such a hidden mystery! ‘hidden with Christ in God’ but waiting to be found …whoever loses his life for me and because of me will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

That is something that has already happened and yet it is waiting to happen.
That is a mystery of something hidden waiting to be revealed.
It means that what is waiting for us is to place our spirit in faith alongside the Spirit of God (paratithemi) and our spirit comes alive and out into the open. Our death is dying to the life of our soul being in control and our spirit is set free into resurrection life. The hidden life can be found and our faith releases it.

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BELIEVING IN AND BELIEVING ON

Arriving at Acts Chapter thirteen we find that from this point on, Paul’s missionary journeys become the key feature of the Book of Acts. He was commissioned to do thos buy the leaders in the church at Antioch.
Acts 13:1 The congregation in Antioch was blessed with a number of prophets and teachers, such as Barnabas, Simon, (nicknamed Niger the black one), Lucius the Cyrenian, Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch (syntrophos – a step-brother), and Saul. One day as they were all praying and fasting and waiting for guidance, the Holy Spirit spoke to them: "Take Barnabas and Saul and commission them for the work I have called them to do.

Setting off on their appointed mission they sailed first to Cypress where Barnabas was from, and we read earlier in Acts chapter 4 that he had sold some land in Cyprus and given the proceeds to the church in Jerusalem. There, in the town of Salamis, they went to the Jewish synagogue and preached. John Mark who went with them as their assistant was the son of Mary whom we saw in the last chapter – she owned the home where all the believers were praying for Peter to be released from prison. John Mark was also the nephew of Barnabas.
Afterwards they preached from town to town across the entire island until finally they reached Paphos where they meet a Jewish counterfeit prophet named Bar-Jesus. His name in in Greek was Elymas which means a wizard or sorcerer. He had attached himself to the Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of considerable insight and understanding who invited Barnabas and Paul to visit him, because he wanted to hear their message from God. But the sorcerer Elymas interfered and urged the Proconsul to pay no attention to what Paul and Barnabas said, trying to stop him from trusting the Lord.

Vs.9 Then Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, glared angrily at the sorcerer and said, “You son of the devil, full of every sort of trickery and villainy, enemy of all that is good, will you never end your opposition to the Lord? And now God has laid his hand of judgment upon you, and you will be stricken with blindness for a season”.
Instantly mist and darkness fell upon him, and he began wandering around begging for someone to take his hand and lead him. When the Proconsul saw what happened, he believed and was astonished at the power of God’s message. It is interesting to note that Elymas who was a Jew and a sorcerer and a false prophet warranted the judgement of being stoned to death according to Jewish law. For some reason, most probably political, this man had not come under Jewish judgement - but he was dealt with directly from God for opposing God’s message to the Proconsul Sergius Paulus, so Paul sees the first fruits of the gospel to the Gentiles on this first missionary journey in the conversion of the Roman Proconsul.

Vs.13 Paul and those with him left Paphos by ship for Sia Minor (Turkey), landing at the port town of Perga. It is here that John Mark departs from Paul and Barnabus and returns to Jerusalem, where his mother and family lived.

After John Mark left, Barnabas and Paul went on to Antioch, a different Antioch - a city in the province of Pisidia, and on the Sabbath they attended the service in the synagogue.
After the usual readings from the Books of Moses and from the Prophets, those in charge of the service sent them this message: “Brothers, if you have any word of instruction for us come and give it!” So Paul stood, waved a greeting to them and began. “Men of Israel,” he said, “and all others here who reverence God, let me begin my remarks with a bit of history.

When Paul is invited to speak to the Jews in their synagogue, he brings the same kind of message that Stephen brought when he was stoned to death in front of Saul. It is also similar to what Peter did when he preached the gospel. The pattern they used was to remind the Jewish people of their history and to highlight certain points which prophesied the coming of Jesus as saviour, to die for us and to rise from the dead.
He then further convicts them about Israel being the fulfillment of many other prophecies concerning their condemnation of Jesus, and their rejection of him as their Messiah. Paul also powerfully emphasises the significance of Jesus burial and resurrection, just as Stephen and Peter did in their testimony to the Jews.

The following week almost the entire city turned out to hear them preach the Word of God, both Jews and many Gentiles. But when the Jewish leaders saw the crowds, they were jealous, and cursed and argued against whatever Paul said.
Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared,
Vs.44“It was necessary that this Good News from God should be given first to you Jews. But since you have rejected it and chosen to deny eternal life—well, we will offer it to Gentiles as a light to them, to lead them from the farthest corners of the earth to God’s salvation.’”
Vs. 48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as believed were ordained to eternal life.

No one can ordain or appoint someone to live something out of their heart unless they truly believe it - then they ordain it for themselves. The word in Greek for ordain is - tasso - "to place in order, arrange,"… e.g., whether being appointed by someone to do a task, or being appointed by God or though others to perform a ministry or to commit oneself through one's own responsibility or authority. But in this case it means to commit oneself through one's own responsibility or authority – to fulfill a life purpose.
After Paul continued to preach with emphasis about believing in the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus, many Jews chose to remain in denial, but those who truly believed the message chose to build their lives upon this and to live within the resurrected life of Jesus.
What does it mean to believe? Everyone believes in something – its their reality.

Paul and Stephen and Peter made the resurrection paramount as a stunning event which was to change all of history and its subsequent universal reality. But if this truth is going to shape the spirituality and philosophy of our human thinking and behaviour it needs to be embraced individually in all of its beauty and power. It must not remain as a footnote of history that is recited and quoted and even supported by other historical writings as if it was enough to just believe it happened. The truth of the resurrection is that the resurrected life of Jesus is alive in me and wants to be expressed through me.

Many Christians and churchgoer’s have believed IN the resurrection, but that is not the same as believing ON. Last week this got me thinking and praying.
Why should a preposition make a difference?
Believing IN is essential, and it comes first. It means accepting something as true and not denying it. The Greek word is en. If you believe in something you can at least receive something from that truth or ideology and even make it a very important thing IN your life.
John 3:15 So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Believing ON. The Greek word is epi, a primary preposition; properly, meaning superimposition. It means to superimpose one’s life upon someone or something as a belief system – I can believe in many things but what I believe on will shape my life. It is something we merge into with our life and it merges into us and lives out through us. It is not used in the Gospels. It only starts in the Book of Acts and continues through in the epistles – a different kind of believing.
Acts 16:31 "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,

We are essentially spirit beings, and we must accurately and faithfully believe from our spirit which is created in the image of God in eternity. Our spirit was created as our uniquely and individually designed self. Our spirit contains our mind that can receive truth from God and our heart that receives faith to believe ON him.

We express that spirit life through our souls, and our spirit is able shape our souls. But our souls are also formed as the expression of emotional responses to what happens around us and by other belief systems and ideologies and imaginations that make an impression upon us. These soul activities can drive our decision making and shape our character.
But our soul should not be running our life – Our spirit was created for that - to take the lead in our life and it has the responsibility to ordain itself to the truth about eternal life above any other belief system or ideology.
The soul also expresses the God given gifts and talents and unique personality that God created in our spirit, but our soul’s emotions can drive us into wrong thinking and wrong choices. The word emotion means ‘to emote’ or to move us into action and a disordered soul leads to disordered action. If the soul takes the lead it causes us to overloaded with the burdens of all the distress and suffering that we experience in life.
Our focused purposeful spirit was created to take the lead in our life and it has the responsibility to ordain itself to the truth about eternal life above any other belief system or ideology.

When our spirit takes the lead, it desires to follow a greater leader that is held in our highest regard. Our spirit wants to be one with the ideas and desires of that leader. That leader is Jesus. Our human spirit deep down longs to be understood and to be revealed to others as being real and believed in, and it longs to be that person to those whom it loves and wants to be with - to bless and strengthen their lives, and to be glad to be alive.

Let your spirit take leadership over your soul today – coming alive and teaching the soul what to believe – have the soulish belief systems or ideologies to stand aside for your heart of faith in the spirit. You can ordain yourself to expressing through your soul life that comes from your spirit. Otherwise your soul will chew you up instead of allowing your spirit to grow you up. Rather than trying to add more years to your life – add more life to your years. You will live better and longer.

David led with his spirit in bringing God’s blessing upon his soul Psalm 103.
Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His goodness to you: He forgives all your failures, heals all your afflictions, redeems your life from destruction, and crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,

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INNER RESURRECTION POWER

Continuing in the Book of Acts Chapter eleven we see in verse nineteen the great changes to the church in Jerusalem because of the persecution of the church.
Acts 11:19 The believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews.
That time of persecution prompted an outreach of the Gospel from Jerusalem into the Roman Empire. When some of the Jewish and Gentile disciples travelled to Antioch and began sharing the message of Jesus with the people there the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas, a Hellenist from Cyprus, to Antioch to investigate and provide support. Antioch was a prominent cosmopolitan city in the Roman Empire and a cultural melting pot with a diverse population - and Barnabas the bridge-builder helped in bringing unity between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile believers in Antioch and providing teaching and discipleship to the new converts.

Barnabas knew he needed Paul to help establish and grow the church, because he knew that God had given the ministry of the Gospel for the Gentiles to Paul, so he took the journey of over five hundred Kilometres to Tarsus in Syria where Paul lived. They returned together to Antioch, where they spent a year together teaching and ministering to the growing congregation, and it was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus Christ were first referred to as "Christians".

In Acts 11:27-30 we read that about this same time some prophets came to Antioch from Jerusalem, and one of them named Agabus stood up one day and, prompted by the Spirit, warned that a severe famine was about to devastate the entire country. So the disciples decided that each of them would send whatever they could to their poorer fellow Christians in Jerusalem to help out, and they sent Barnabas and Saul to deliver the collection to the leaders in Jerusalem.
We now move on to Acts Chapter twelve.

Acts 12:1 That's when King Herod got it into his head to go after some of the church members. He killed James, John's brother with the sword. When he saw how much it raised his popularity with the Jews, he arrested Peter too - all this during Passover Week - and he had him thrown in jail, putting four squads of four soldiers each to guard him. He was planning a public execution after Passover. All the time that Peter was under heavy guard in the jail, the church prayed for him most earnestly.

James’ death served as a rallying point of prayer for the believers, inspiring them in their faith. In the sovereignty of God it was not time for Peter yet - he was imprisoned, and the chapter goes on to describe a miraculous event which highlights the unceasing intervention of God in ruling over the affairs of his Church.

While Peter was sleeping in the prison, an angel of the Lord appeared to him. The angel struck Peter on the side and woke him up, instructing him to get dressed and follow him. The chains fell off Peter's wrists, and the angel led him past the guards and through the locked gates.

Just as James’ laying down his life for God is a symbol of Jesus laying down his life for us as the Passover Lamb, Peter's escape from imprisonment could be seen as a symbol of resurrection - Jesus emerged from the tomb, Peter emerges from the prison. Both of these apostles were willing to fulfil to the utmost the words of Jesus.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:24)

What we find is inner resurrection life

Meanwhile, back at the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, many believers were fervently praying for Peter’s safety, aware of the danger he was in.
As Peter followed the angel, he thought he was experiencing a vision rather than reality. They passed through the city streets until they reached the house where the believers were praying. Peter knocked on the outer door, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer. She recognized Peter's voice but was so overjoyed that she left him standing outside and rushed back to tell the others that Peter was at the door.

But they wouldn't believe her, dismissing her report. "You're crazy," they said. She stuck by her story, insisting. They still wouldn't believe her and said, "It must be his angel." All this time poor Peter was standing out in the street, still knocking on the door. Finally, they opened up and saw him—and went wild! Peter put his hands up and calmed them down. He described how the Master had gotten him out of jail, then said, "Tell James (the other James – the brother of Jesus) and the brothers what's happened." He left them and went off to another place for safety.
At daybreak the jail was in an uproar. "Where is Peter? What's happened to Peter?" When Herod sent for Peter and they could neither produce him nor explain why not, he ordered their execution: "Off with their heads!" Fed up with Judea and Jews, he went for a vacation to Caesarea.

Peter leaves the pages of the book of Acts at this point except for one mention in Chapter fifteen. After this chapter the Book of Acts deals with the missionary journeys of Paul

Acts 12:20-23 Now Herod was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon because of their appeal for food supplies. So the people sent a delegation to make peace with him because their coastal cities were dependent upon Herod’s inland fields in these times of famine. The delegates won the support of Blastus, Herod’s personal assistant, and an appointment with Herod was granted. When the day arrived, Herod put on his royal robes, sat on his throne, and made a speech to them. The people knew they had to flatter him and gave him a great ovation, shouting, “It’s the voice of a god, not of a man!” Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a disease because he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died.
We again see the unceasing intervention of God in ruling over the affairs of his Church in miraculous mercy and in judgement of evil.
At one time the mother of James and John had asked Jesus if her sons could sit on his right and left hand in his Kingdom and the Bible says that Peter was indignant at those two brothers for thinking that. But Jesus said that was not his place to decide that question, but he did ask the twelve disciples if they were willing to drink the cup of his suffering that he would drink of, speaking of his laying down his life for us on the cross (Matthew 20:20). They all said yes, they were willing - and we read here in the Book of Acts that some years later (between 41AD to 44 AD), at the Feast of Passover James drank from that cup of suffering that Jesus spoke about.

We have been given the same words of Jesus that James and Peter were willing to fulfil – to deny ourselves for Jesus’ sake and take up our cross. Theirs was a dramatic fulfillment of this and has been immortalised in Scripture, but ours, while being worked out in a less spectacular way in our everyday lives releases the same resurrection power of Jesus.

We have been given the risen life of Jesus within us to live out from. Jesus does not dwell within us as a bystander. Jesus wishes to express the beauty and strength of his glorified spiritual human self through our spiritual human self. Our soulish self can easily have rule over us and choke off the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, which is the love and peace and joy that harmonises our entire being with the Being of God.

This is what denying our self means – it is for his sake, not only for our sake. Self-denial should not be reduced to some kind of unnecessary self-depriving virtue signal that we can proudly congratulate ourselves for – No, we ask for our soulish life to stand aside for our spiritual life in Christ to come alive in us, and we need God’s help to do that and it is the desire of God’s heart to do this for us and with us, as the Bible says ‘Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “the Spirit that he has made to dwell in us yearns jealously for us”? (James 4:5).
And this cannot happen on the run – we need to be still and know that he is God – God within – who waits patiently for us to give him our time – time for our heart and mind to get to know him personally – not just read about him or hear about him in sermons.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon :: August 1855 - Morning Reading
"Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide." — Genesis 24:63
Very admirable was his occupation. If those who spend so many hours in idle company, light reading, and useless pastimes, could learn wisdom, they would find more profitable association and more interesting engagements in meditation than in the vanities which now have such charms for them. We would all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace, if we were more alone with God. Meditation chews the cud and extracts the real nutriment from the mental food gathered elsewhere. When Jesus is the theme, meditation is sweet indeed.

Christian Meditation is an act of faith with a purposeful intention – giving thanks for being in the loving presence of God and that Jesus is now powerfully at work for our good in the unseen realm. This purposeful movement of our faith gradually overrides the random emotional agitation and distracting thoughts and impulses of our soulish mind. This makes room for our spirit to be open to hearing what Jesus may be saying to our hearts and minds. This results in a steady growth of faith, and over time it results in our soul becoming more responsive to God and less reactive to everything that happens in our everyday situations.

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REPENTANCE TO LIFE

Acts 11:1 Now the apostles and brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. 2And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, 3saying, “You went to be with uncircumcised men and ate with them!” 4But Peter explained it to them in order from the beginning,

Peter then tells them in the next seventeen verses about his visit to Cornelius and the message of God’s reconciliation of the whole world in Christ.

I would like to focus on a significant statement made by the Jerusalem Christians in Acts Chapter eleven when they recognised God’s work of salvation for the household of Cornelius through the message of Peter – ‘18When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.’ (NKJV) The Jewish Christian leaders were initially hesitant about including Gentiles in the Christian community as many believed that Gentiles may need to fully convert to Judaism before becoming followers of Jesus. And now they have evidence from Peter that Gentiles have been included in God’s gift of ‘Repentance to life’ in Christ, going beyond John the Baptist’s repentance from sin. Repentance develops may I say evolves and advances us from one stage to a higher stage. Never seen this repentance to life before but always wished it was there! Well it is.

‘Repentance from sin’ in the Old Testament challenged a person to recognise their sinfulness and to seek with all their will and determination to turn away from sin and to obey God’s Commandments and be devoted to him. Israel wasn’t able to obey the Commandments in their own strength, but God had provided the offering of blood sacrifices for them to receive forgiveness and mercy for their sins. Sin then sacrifice sin then sacrifice and on and on.

But since the Holy Spirit has been sent into the world for everyone it has become his work to now bring everyone to the awareness of the need of turning from sin and unbelief (repentance from sin) and receiving mercy and forgiveness through the work of Jesus on the cross, But the Holy Spirit’s work is also to turn us to living a life with Jesus (repentance to life). And Jesus promised this to the world. I will send the Helper (The Holy Spirit) to you. And when he comes, he will convict (challenge) the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement (John 16:7)

There are three stages of the work of the Helper here – sin, righteousness and judgment. That Scripture speaks of the ceaseless tugging of people away from sin by the Holy Spirit in contesting our independent mindset of human resistance to God - and everybody is affected by this inner spiritual struggle in their souls whether they understand what is going on or not. This struggle manifests itself in the world in a multitude of inner emotional conflicts and external relational conflicts and bodily feelings of unrest and multiple conditions of disorder.

In stage one here of convicting us of sin the Holy Spirit shows us where our struggle of resistance is, and we can now be in the light and no longer in the dark. And those who are in inner conflict may now be granted repentance to the acknowledging the truth (2Timothy 2:24). When we acknowledge this truth about ourselves we find a new freedom in our soul from the cycle of confusion of sin/sorry sin/sorry to be now led into the next stage of empowerment of repentance to life. Stage two in the Scripture above also tells of the Holy spirit’s work of challenging us about righteousness which is finding grace to walk in God’s ways. We can now have assurance that ‘the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1). This a new spiritual energy at work in us since Jesus went to be with the Father motivating our hearts desires to live above the human energy of sin and separation from God. Stage three in that Scripture also speaks of being challenged and assured about the fact that the ruler of this world (the devil) has been judged. We can overcome the powers of darkness that seek to rule over the human soul. This is the assurance and confidence that darkness and sin and confusion will no longer have the rule over you Sin need never again rule over you, for now you are no longer judged by the law where sin enslaves you, but you are free to give yourself to being under the empowering grace and mercy of God. (Romans 6:14)

The New Testament Gospel message calls for a deeper repentance than just a ‘repentance from sin’. It calls for ‘repentance to life’, which is taught in all of the epistles, and it teaches it as living in the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That repentance leads to a transformation of one's entire life, resulting in a new way of living in alignment with the requirements of God's Commandments (Romans 8:2-4). which are now written in our hearts. This is the New Covenant life offered to us through Jesus Christ which works in us a complete change of heart and mind that leads to a life lived in devotion to God. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways (Ezekiel 36:26).

The life of Jesus works in us to change the desires of our new heart so that we may now ‘not sin’. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the appeasement for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world ‘(1John 2:1). We are always being challenged in the New Testament to abide in this state of ‘repentance to life’ and to abide in his life. And it manifests itself in our souls as a freedom from our inner spiritual struggles of human resistance to God and into a peaceful and ordered life in the healing of our souls. Peter proclaims this as the goal of your faith the salvation/healing of your soul (2Peter 1:9). But we are not just like sick patients sitting around waiting to be healed – we participate in the healing process of our souls through faith.

In searching for the word repentance (metanoia) in all of the epistles I found it occurred only five times. On each occasion it was talking about turning to life and overcoming sin. Romans 2:4, 2 Timothy 2:24, Hebrews 6:1, Hebrews 6:3, 2 Peter 3:9.

In Acts Paul urges the Greeks (and the rest of the world) to repent into the life of God through Jesus. ‘He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ as even some of your own writers have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ The times of ignorance (before the Incarnation of Jesus) God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, (Acts 17:26)

God wants everybody to know what is on offer through the life of Jesus Christ. I came upon some notes made by Spurgeon in September 1855 on ‘Repentance unto life’. And I thought it was a better summary than what I could come up with for what I have shared today.

We are this morning to give a very careful and prayerful attention to the "repentance" which is "unto life” as the act of salvation of the soul, the germ which contains all the essentials of salvation, which secures them to us, and prepares us for them. By "Repentance unto life," I think we are to understand it as repentance which is accompanied by spiritual life in the soul, and ensures eternal life to everyone who possesses it. "Repentance unto life," I say, brings with it spiritual life, or rather, is the first consequent thereof. There are repentances which are not signs of life, except of natural life, because they are only effected by the power of the conscience and the natural voice speaking in men; but the repentance here spoken of is produced by the Author of life, and when it comes, it begets such life in the soul, that he who was "dead in trespasses and sins," is brought alive together with Christ;

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GOD’S WORK OF RECONCILITION  The Book of Acts continues in Chapter nine describing the growth of the church and the work of the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Apostle Peter.

Acts 9: 31. Things then began to go peacefully in the churches throughout all of Judea and Samaria. The churches began to grow and multiply, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. So the Apostle Peter began to travel throughout the regions roundabout. He miraculously brings healing to a bedridden paralysed man and he then travels to Joppa and raises a woman named Dorcas from the dead. Peter then stayed on at Joppa for many days in the house of Simon the tanner. The ministry of Peter continues into Chapter ten.

ACTS 10:1 A Centurion named Cornelius, had a vision in which he saw an angel of God who said to him, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have been received by God as an offering! Now send some men to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter.  Meanwhile Peter was praying on a rooftop and received a vision of a sheet containing animals, reptiles and birds and he was told by God to kill them and eat them. But Peter said ‘No Lord’ our Jewish laws declare these animals as unclean. 15 But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” 

Peter was then told by the Holy Spirit that the messengers from Cornelius had arrived to ask him to come to the house of Cornelius the Centurion, and the next day Peter went with them to Caesarea. As Peter entered the home Cornelius fell at his feet to worship him. But Peter explained that he was just a man like Cornelius himself and even though he believed that he should not be entering the house of a Gentile, that God had told him that he ‘should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean’.

Cornelius told Peter that God had spoken to him through an angel who directed him to call for Peter to come and he then said to Peter. ‘Now we are all here, waiting before God to hear the message the Lord has given you.” 34 Then Peter replied, ‘I see very clearly that God shows no discrimination or favouritism towards anybody regarding nationality or ethnicity, but everywhere on earth he accepts those who fear him and do what is right…Peter goes on to say. 36 This is the message of the Good News given to the people of Israel - that there is peace with God (eirene – a joining with God) through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.  42 And he has ordered us to preach everywhere and to testify that Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all - of the living and the dead. 43 To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives (actively takes hold of) forgiveness of sins through his name.”44 Even as Peter was saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the message. The Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 

Peter had just heard things come out of his mouth that he had never said before and never even thought of or believed before. In fact, just two days before he had thought and believed just the opposite, but he had now just witnessed the evidence of God reconciling the whole world to himself and inviting humanity into the saving work of Jesus for their lives.  Peter had participated in the astounding message of ‘God’s Work of Reconciliation’. 2 Corinthians 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 we implore you on Christ's behalf, ‘be reconciled’ to God.’  Peter did not know that work of God as the message of Reconciliation and he didn’t ever teach about it as that, because that was the revelation that God gave to Paul as the foundational truth of Jesus bringing oneness with himself to all of humanity as ‘Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27)’.

The word Reconciliation in the Bible is katalasso – that means a mutual change of two things to make one new thing. The supernatural miracle of God’s act of reconciliation for us is that he caused both himself and us to experience a change of Being. God became one of us – forever – now as the risen Christ in Heaven, and he has made us one with him within our hearts to become ‘partakers of his divine nature escaping the corruption that is in the world through sinful desires’ (2Peter 1:4). We are in him, and he is in us - We are reconciled. 

Paul was the only Apostle that taught this, and it is not mentioned in the letters of any of the other Apostles, because Paul was set apart to bring that truth to the world of the non-Jews. The Gentile world had never been taught of the prophetic Scriptures and the understanding of the knowledge of God. Humanity in Adam was alienated from the life of God and ignorant of its truth - humanity was hostile to God (Romans 8:7).

Paul was sent to proclaim God’s remedy for this hostility of ours. ‘For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life’ (Romans 5:10).  There needed to be a reconciled humanity in the earth before people could receive this great salvation that comes through a life yielded to the Lordship of Christ.  2 Cor 5: 14. We have concluded this: that one man has died for all of humanity, and all have died (with him); and he died for all so that those who live (with him) might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was resurrected.

While Reconciliation is for everyone, without faith it can get twisted into a weird kind of universalism, because reconciliation deals with the here and now salvation of our soul in this life – not just an opinion of who is going to heaven and who isn’t. The multitude of opinions regarding the words universalism and predestination (both not mentioned in the Bible) dare us to judge people’s eternal future and we are warned to not judge in these things (Romans 2:1) because Jesus is the One appointed to be the judge of all. When Jesus was judged by the Jewish leaders he said woe upon you, religious leaders—hypocrites! For you tithe down to the last mint leaf in your garden but ignore the weightier things—justice and mercy and faith. (Matthew 23:23). We are not to speculate on unfounded fringe issues but to build on a sure foundation of Gods saving work of justice and mercy through our faith and our faithfulness.  Isaiah 45:22 look to me and be saved all the ends of the Earth.

Reconciliation also reflects Paul’s revelation of being ‘chosen in him before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1:4), which tells us that we were chosen in the last Adam (Jesus) before the first Adam started to breathe - God had rescued us before we even fell - we were found before we were even lost. And we also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation. We had nothing to do with God’s work of Reconciliation and had no say in it. Jesus invaded the world of Adam and did something for us behind our backs that we weren’t even aware of. It is only by faith that we can discover that we have been reconciled to God and can obey his word to ‘be reconciled’. 

Sin was Adam’s work, and we didn’t have any part to play into what Adam did to us either. We weren’t there and had no say in it, we just inherited it and trudged along with it. ‘Therefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed onto all men, for all have sinned’. (Romans 5:12) We had an inheritance in Adam - Mankind had inherited a distorted conscience - the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – a knowledge limited to our self-centred perspective of what life was all about.  That was our life in Adam – and we didn’t need faith to walk that life. Our lack of trust towards God was too great an obstacle for our hearts to reach him. God had to reach us by putting away our estrangement from him and to bring peace and oneness with himself through Jesus. It had to be all his work. 

We now have an inheritance in Jesus – a life in Christ – a life that allows us to live above sin – and we need faith to walk that life. Therefore, we need to be told we are forgiven, and that we need no longer be separated because of the feelings of guilt and shame about our sinful behaviour, which makes us hide from God and cover up in front of each other. We need to have a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance, that acknowledges that God is not at odds with us, and we no longer need be at odds with him (now reconciled). 

Paul is telling us that our total life experience is to be one of seeing ourselves as being part of the very life of God, and an extension of his life into this world. We are also told by Paul to become the messengers of Reconciliation, which means that when we present the Gospel, we present forgiveness of sin first and then oneness with God (God’s work of Reconciliation) and then the saving work of our souls through the life of Jesus within us and then the impartation of his life into our world around us. All this requires a radical new mindset (repentance) which brings about a radical new life of faith. 

OR the message of condemnation - Repent from your sins (God hates sin) – say the sinners prayer – ask God for forgiveness so you don’t go to hell – Invite Jesus into your life because he died for your sins - stop sinning – pray - read your Bible and go to church.

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SOVEREIGN OVER US

The book of Acts is officially called the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, but many say that it could be renamed as ‘The Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit’, because it was God acting sovereignly through the Holy Spirit in people who had yielded their will to his will for their lives. In Chapter nine we saw the sovereign work of God in changing the entire purpose of Paul’s life and bringing him into the eternal purpose of God. He heard the words of a messenger called Ananias who was told to tell Paul ‘how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake’ (Acts 9:16). Paul accepted the things that befell him as being ordained of God and he aligned his will accordingly, and he saw the will of God being done on earth as it was in Heaven as God reordered him and his world around him.

We read on in a few verses later in Acts chapter nine how Paul straightaway confronts suffering and adversity in the attempts of people to persecute him and take his life. 22. But Saul became stronger and stronger, and confounded the Jews in Damascus as he debated with them, proving that Jesus was indeed the Christ Messiah 23. Many days after this, the Jews conferred together and decided to have him put to death. But Saul found out about their plans to ambush him, that they waited in the city gates day and night to take his life. 25. One night the disciples took him and helped him to escape, lowering him down through the city wall in a basket.

It was God’s will to keep Paul alive despite the will of the would-be assassins. And it goes on, with Paul even receiving rejection from Christians and further attempts by assassins to kill him. 26. When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to link up with the disciples but they were all afraid of him and did not believe that he was a disciple. 27. But Barnabas took him under his wing and vouched for him before the apostles and told them how the Lord had appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. He told them how the Lord had commissioned him and how courageously he had preached Jesus at Damascus. So Paul became one of them in his comings and goings in Jerusalem. 29. He preached confidently in the name of Jesus and debated powerfully against the Hellenists, who then began planning how to execute him. 30. The apostles and disciples were aware of this, so they brought him down to the port at Caesarea and sent him off, back home to Tarsus.

Even though Barnabus endorsed Paul as being commissioned by the Lord on the road to Damascus Paul was not commissioned by the other apostles at this time for any special mission. When Paul writes his letter to the Galatians he introduces himself as Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead (Galatians 1:1). And as we see later in his letter to the Galatians, that he was led to be alone with Jesus for three years and not receive teaching or counsel or revelation from any other person. Galatians 1:16 I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and remained with him fifteen days.

He is telling us that the Gospel he received was not from a human source – he did not confer with the other apostles, or anyone else. He went to Arabia, into the wilderness area east of the Jordan and down past Mt Sinai and toward the Red Sea area, and he received revelation from Jesus for three years. (It is conceivable to compare these three years with the three years that the other apostles spent with Jesus on earth). Paul would have fully understood how Jesus had lived his own earthly life, in asking his Father to reveal his will and his ways to him and his timing to him, for all that he did on earth. Jesus himself said I can do nothing by Myself; I judge only as I hear, and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of my Father who sent Me (John 5:30)

Paul would have realized that his own life had been repurposed and was being led by an unseen hand into unplanned events and confrontations, and protected and kept alive and provided for among people whose lives were also being guided by a Sovereign God. Ever since that meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus it was clear to Paul that everywhere he went Jesus was there, and that everything that happened to him was something that the Father had arranged, and that things that were said to him were things he was meant to hear, even though the circumstances were often difficult or threatening. He simply knew that things came to pass that he would never have expected to happen if he was totally in charge of things.

Paul would also have understood the quandary of God’s sovereignty and our own free will, because before he met Jesus and received the Holy Spirit, he had chosen to do whatever his conscience told him was right in his own sight and he had no perception of the sovereignty of God in his life. It was only in retrospect that he would have understood that God’s hand was always upon his life in all of his struggles between the good and evil within him. He knew God in a different way now and faithfully yielded his will to God’s will and he could now witness the wonder of God’s sovereignty. An unbeliever would say you were mad to believe in such a wonder as God’s sovereignty.

Paul was now in a different world, where laws of cause and effect are radically different. Paul had given himself to the will of God, and we know the way he was now thinking after receiving his life changing revelation from Jesus. He knew that by placing his life in God’s hands for the Father’s will to be done that he was a partner with Jesus in bringing God’s Heavenly Kingdom order into the earth. Paul never claimed to have become perfected in this pursuit but said that he was always pressing toward that mark (Philippians 3:14).

When people pray ‘Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’ they may sincerely believe in that as a possibility that might happen someday, but not believe for that to become a living reality in the here and now humdrum of their lives. Paul knew what he meant when he prayed that prayer.

The world’s culture, especially in these days tells us to make our own plan and own it and work hard and it will deliver. Many Christians believe that they can claim any Scripture and own it and believe hard and ask God to do it and he will deliver. That is understandable if we put things in the category of standard cause and effect.

But Paul sees a greater mystery of God’s sovereignty sitting above this limited concept, and I know people in the business world and other areas of the work force who do make plans, but they put them in God’s hands seeking to align them with the order of his Kingdom – and they do work hard – and they see God sovereignly at work in their work. And I know people who pray to God in their need and surrender their prayer into his hands for his will to be done and they give thanks, and they see God sovereignly at work in their lives.

Paul was later to write about this mysterious way of life in his letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians 1:11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. (In Christ we were destined to fulfill the plan of God, who accomplishes everything according to his design). [BTW – predestination is about purpose, here and now - not about going to Heaven or hell (Romans 9)]

Father God, the divine overseer of our lives - sovereign over us – is able to work all things together for his will to re-order and direct our lives in his way and in his time. He provides for our natural and spiritual needs in bringing his design for our life to pass. and your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things (natural and spiritual needs of our soul). But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:32–33, ESV) Let us look at what that Scripture is saying. It is telling us that our Heavenly Father knows all about the burdened fretting of our soul and as our Father he invites us to trust him for his provision and to align our thinking and believing in his timing and his way of reordering our lives - seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness – in alignment with his ways. This also means inviting his correcting of us when we get off course.

We can believe that God has a sovereign plan for each of our lives that is based on his infinite wisdom, love, and purpose. God's providence involves his ability to orchestrate events and align them with his divine plan for our ultimate good as his children. Romans 8:28 – All things work together for good for those who love him and are invited to live according to his purpose. Romans 12 :1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your which is your reasonable service (logikos latrea – Logical way to serve him) We can pray and seek God's guidance in our lives knowing that God actively listens to our prayers and intervenes in response to them. While his ways may not always align with our human expectations, we trust that his intervention is always for our spiritual healing and growth and blessing. Miracles of timing and seeming coincidence will occur as instances of God's direct intervention in the natural order of things to bring about surprising wonders. These miracles are signs of God's presence and power, confirming his mercy and faithfulness to His children. We grow in faith through this and in commitment and in inner peace.

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PAUL’S JOB DESCRIPTION

Acts 9 :1. Saul continued to terrorize the disciples of the Lord with murderous threats. One day he went to the high priest, saying he wanted letters of authorization he could give to those in the synagogues of Damascus, that if he found any followers of Jesus, men or women, he might arrest them and bring them bound as prisoners, to Jerusalem. 3. He set off on his journey, and when he was almost at Damascus, a great light from Heaven shone all around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ 5. Saul said ‘Who are you Lord?’ And the Lord said ‘ I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. And it has been hard for you to fight against the prodding of your own conscience. 6. Astonished and shaken up by what had happened to him he said ‘Lord what do you want me to do?’ The Lord said ‘Get up and go into the city and I will tell you what you have to do.’ 7. The men who had been travelling with him stood by, speechless, because they heard a voice but did not see anyone. 8. Saul then picked himself up off the ground and when he opened his eyes he found he could not see a thing, so his companions had to lead him by the hand into Damascus. 9. He stayed blind for three days, and neither ate nor drank anything the whole time. 10. The Lord then spoke to a man called Ananias in a vision, and said ‘Ananias, Get up and go to Straight Street, to the house of Judas, and ask for a man called Saul, whom you will find praying. I’ve given Saul a vision of a man called Ananias coming in to lay hands on him, so that he might get his sight back again. Ananias answered,’ Lord I have heard about this man from many people, and how much evil and destruction he has brought upon the saints in Jerusalem. And he has obtained authority here in Damascus from the chief priests to imprison anyone who calls upon your name. But the Lord answered him ‘Do what you are told, because he is a chosen vessel of mine, to bear my name before the nations, and before kings, and the children of Israel. 16. I want to show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake. 17. Ananias did as he was told and went into the house and laid hands upon Saul and said ‘Brother Saul the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on your journey here has sent me to you for you to receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Straightaway it was as though scales fell from his eyes and he could see. He stood up and became baptized. Saul’s strength returned after he ate some food. He then stayed on for some days in Damascus with some of the disciples. Soon after that Saul began preaching in the synagogues about Christ being the Son of God. He confounded the Jews in Damascus as he debated with them, proving that Jesus was indeed the Christ Messiah.

At the time of this spectacular conversion account Saul would have been a man in his thirties and regarded as one of the most promising of the young Jews in Judaism, commissioned as the enforcer against Christians – and for him to ‘switch sides’ was unthinkable for all parties. He was convinced that Jesus was dead, and now all that remained for him was to wipe out as many followers as he could. Saul had a purpose in life – he had power over people, to judge, condemn and to punish. But meeting the living Jesus on the road to Damascus changed that purpose and the entire course of his life, as it does to all who meet the living Jesus. Paul would have power to love and transform and heal the souls of man ‘for the love of Christ compels me’ (2Corinthians 5:14.) These two powers contend for the hearts of mankind in this day.

Saul was led, blinded, into Damascus, and didn’t eat or drink for three days. When he regains his sight the first thing he sees is a man whose name is Ananias which means ‘The grace of God’, and the grace of God becomes his banner of life from that moment on.

It is interesting to note that a major part of his job description as Paul is to suffer for Jesus’ names sake. There are many Scriptures describing these sufferings in Paul’s letters but he sums it up comprehensively in the following verses;

2Corinthians 11:13 Concerning those who boast that they are doing God’s work in just the same way we are. God never sent those men at all; they are “phonies” who have fooled you into thinking they are Christ’s apostles… They say they serve Christ? But I have served him far more! (Have I gone mad to boast like this?) I have worked harder than them, been put in jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again and again. Five different times the Jews gave me their terrible thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was severely pelted with rocks. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I was in the open sea all night and the whole next day. I have traveled many weary miles and have been often in great danger from flooded rivers and from robbers and from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the hands of the Gentiles. I have faced grave dangers from mobs in the cities and from death in the deserts and in the stormy seas and from men who claim to be brothers in Christ but are not. I have lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights. Often I have been hungry and thirsty and have gone without food; often I have shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I don’t feel his weakness? Who is made to fall, and I am not consumed with grief?

Every experience of suffering that Paul went through became the preface to the revealing of his ministry of life - the life-giving Spirit of Jesus worked in him and through him. For Paul this process is the only valid ‘work of the ministry’ that God has ordained for us who live as being ‘in Christ’. Paul was not interested in the ‘dead works’ of religion but in the ‘faith that works by love’. (Galatians 5:5). He knew that faith was dead without being energised by the work of the love of God. Paul knew that that love was the energy (energeo-working) that releases God’s creative power and God’s transformative power into the hearts of mankind. Paul saw suffering as an opportunity to release that energy and saw it as being able to overpower the worldly power of unloving energies that opposed the power of that divine power of ‘faith that works by love’ in the world.

The laws of physics describe power as a function of the flow of energy. The world sees the self-determining of purpose and status and meaningful influence in life as a power struggle between competing ambitions and ideologies. This power is always at work in Politics and financial corporate identity, and cultural relevance, and religion. These entities compete for moral high ground and virtue status against each other, and the power struggle is ruthless. But the energy of the power in those ideological power struggles is the same that Saul the Pharisee once lived in. It is to judge and condemn and to punish. This is the power that drives today’s identity politics and saving the planet ideologies. People are recruited into joining a noble moral army to fight the evils of what their ideology claims is evil. By joining this army a recruit is entitled to use whatever means is available to destroy the enemies of their cause. The recruits can praise themselves for being virtuous saviours of today’s culture, and their virtue and self-aggrandisement does not even mean ever having to do anything productive or sacrificial (unless you call destroying statues, desecrating valuable artwork in museums or disrupting peak hour traffic as being productive, or sacrificial – no, all one has to do is judge and condemn and punish the deniers of the virtuous moral code (and turn up for protest marches). The power brokers and leaders of these power structures embolden the efforts of the deluded recruits, whose lives end up producing confusion and disillusionment.

The world elevates the power of judgment above the power of love, but with Christians it must not be so (but so often is). We are energised by the power of God’s love. God loves, and God judges (we don’t) and he holds everyone to account for what they purposed as against what he purposed for their lives. I came not to condemn he world but to save the world The best way for a Christian to overcome sin in the world as best they can is to overcome it in themselves as best they can.

Paul saw that the power of sacrificial love was worth dying for, as it was for Jesus. In Paul’s fellowship of the suffering of Christ he was able to count everything else as loss, because for him, suffering had meaning and purpose. We may not be invited into such a dangerous and life-threatening journey of suffering as Paul’s, with its adventure and misadventure, but we can certainly relate to the other inner sufferings that he went through in his soul. As he writes later on.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ‘For we who live are always being yielded up to death (thanatos – loss of life) for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal body. So death is at work in us, but life in you (2Corinthians 4:7). When we enter into the life of becoming a life-giving Spirit with Jesus that life is imparted by our faith, not just thought about or talked about. That life gets ministered into the spiritual atmosphere around us and is able to touch the spirit of other people. There is a spiritual atmosphere that exists as an unseen reality everywhere on earth, and Paul desired above all things to ‘know him, and the fellowship of his sufferings that he might also know the power of his resurrection’. (Philippians 3:10) Paul also said ‘be imitators of me as I am of Christ’ (1Corinthians 11)

The life-giving Spirit operates through the yielding of our own self purposed life in order to find our God purposed life. ‘For whoever would save (protect) his (self-purposed) life will lose it, but whoever loses his self-purposed life for my sake will find his God purposed life. (Matthew 16:25)

We continue to live with a realistic awareness of our limited outer life and facing life’s ongoing difficulties while at the same time resting in faith that our God purposed life energised by sacrificial love is continually bringing forth its promise of transformation of our own and of other peoples’ lives beyond our imagination and overpowering all other powers of darkness and sin. We can become the embodiment of the life-giving Spirit of Jesus and impart God’s life into the spiritual atmosphere around us. This does not mean that we look like we are wearing a halo with our feet not quite touching the ground. It simply means going about life managing our everyday activities but coming from a place of faith deep down inside of us that something powerful of the risen life of Jesus in the world of the unseen, is bringing his will upon the earth according to his will in Heaven and transforming our personal world around us.

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PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH – ACTS 8:26-40 The story of Acts chapter eight concerning Philip’s ministry in Samaria and the account of all the people there receiving the power of the Holy Spirit continues to unfold in a most powerful way.

Acts 8:26. The angel of the Lord then spoke to Philip and told him to travel south on the road that goes from Jerusalem down to the desert region of Gaza. When he got there, he saw an Ethiopian man, a eunuch who was a high official of Candace the queen of Ethiopia, and who managed her treasury. He had been to Jerusalem to worship, and He was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading Isaiah the prophet.  29. The Holy Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join that man sitting in the chariot. Philip went directly to the man and heard him reading out loud from the book of Isaiah. He asked him if he understood what it was that he was reading. The man said ’The only way I can understand this is if somebody explains it to me.’ He asked Philip to come up and sit next to him. The passage of Scripture that he was reading was “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His justice was taken away, and who will declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth.” (Isaiah 53:7ff)

1. The eunuch said to Philip ‘Who is Isaiah speaking about here, is it himself, or some other man? Philip began to share with the man from that very passage of Scripture, that it was Jesus who was being spoken about, and he preached about Jesus to him.  As they continued to travel, they came to a watering place and the eunuch said to Philip ‘Here is some water, what is stopping me from being baptised?’ Philip replied, ‘If you believe with all your heart, nothing is stopping you.’ The eunuch said ‘I believe that Jesus is the Son of God’ Then he commanded the drivers to stop the chariot and he and Philip went down into the water together and Philip baptised him.

2. When they came up out of the water the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away to Azotus (60 Km – a short flight) and he vanished from the sight of the eunuch, who resumed his journey, rejoicing all the way (The journey of the rest of his life).  Philip then passed through the area of Azotus, preaching in all the cities there till he arrived at Caesarea.

The Ethiopian was obviously a man who had converted to Judaism and had been visiting for the Jewish feast in Jerusalem where he would have heard about Jesus. He must have had a seeking heart and so God arranged for the truth of the gospel to be brought to him, and Philip was given by the Spirit, the words to say to the man, explaining that the Scriptures were talking of Jesus as the promised Messiah. He must have explained to the man the truth of water baptism as being the picture of his old life being buried with Jesus into death and then rising into new life in Christ, because the Ethiopian had asked to be baptised. He was then fully immersed in water as it states that they went ‘down into the water and came up out of the water’. There is no talk of any ‘follow up’ after the man’s conversion so Philip would have had to commit the Ethiopian into The Lord’s hands for his future growth in his walk with The Lord. But it is a known fact that Ethiopia became ‘Christianised’ very early in the history of the church, so it appears that Philip’s ministry was very effective, and the message of water baptism that Philip would have taught him would have been enough to allow that man to walk in the freedom of the exchanged life of Jesus within him. The beautiful outcome of the experience of salvation and revelation that came to the eunuch on that road has another most likely and astounding outcome. As the eunuch would have continued to read Isaiah from chapter fifty three onwards his eyes would have alighted on the following words from chapter fifty-six. Isaiah 56:3 And my blessings are for Gentiles, too, when they accept the Lord; don’t let them think that I will ever overlook them. And this is for the eunuchs too. They will be as much mine as anyone. For I say this to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths holy, who choose the things that please me and obey my laws: I will give them—in my house, within my walls—a name far greater than the honour they would receive from having sons and daughters. For the name that I will give them is an everlasting one; it will never disappear. As for the Gentiles, the outsiders who join the people of the Lord and serve him and love his name, who are his servants and don’t desecrate the Sabbath, and have accepted his covenant and promises, I will bring them also to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and make them full of joy within my House of Prayer. I will accept their sacrifices and offerings, for my Temple shall be called “A House of Prayer for All Nations”! For the Lord God who brings back the outcasts of Israel says: I will bring others, too, besides my people Israel. (what a unique passage of Scripture)

Just before Jesus ascended in Heaven, his last words included the following command about doing all the things he told them to do, emphasising being baptised, and we can see this being done throughout the Book of Acts. Matthew 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples in all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you; and be sure of this—that I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”  Philip would have faithfully obeyed that command and explained to the Ethiopian the picture of water baptism as being buried into the death of Jesus by being submerged into the water and rising up with Jesus in newness of life when coming up out of the water.  But it is Paul who brilliantly describes to us the essence of this life changing act of faith. He speaks to the Romans about how God’s grace and goodness outweighs all the sin and unbelief in the world because the new life of Jesus that lives within us is available to all those who believe in that and commit to living it out.  Romans 6:1 But does this mean that because God’s goodness outweighs our badness so much that we should stay bad so that more of God’s goodness can be seen? Definitely not. How can we, who want the old sin and unbelief life to die off, also want to keep it alive at the same time?  As many of us as were baptised (submerged and soaked) into the life of Jesus and identified with his life are first immersed into his death, and soaked in what his death means. It means that we were buried with him when we were immersed as one with him in his death, so that just as he was raised into new life by the power of The Father, we will also be soaked with the power of his new life. 5 For if we have shared the death with him, we will also share the risen life with him. Be aware of this, that the entire previous order of humanity in Adam has been crucified with Jesus, so that humanity’s alliance with sin and unbelief might be made redundant (katarge??), and that from now on we don’t have to serve in that old alliance of humanity in Adam. See yourselves as being as dead, as Jesus was, to the world of sin and unbelief, but alive and living for and with and in God, through what Jesus has done on our behalf.

Jesus said that the holy Spirit would be sent into the world to convict the world of sin because of their unbelief – the word sin ‘hamartia’ means to miss the mark, so to convict the world of sin means to reveal to the heart of everyone what is causing them to miss the mark of the target for their life – believing in Jesus and letting his life live within them.  The big sin is unbelief. 

12 Sin and unbelief are no longer in control of you, because you are not answerable to the penalties and judgements of the Commandments, but you are answerable to the empowerment of God’s goodness and grace. And being set free from sin and unbelief’s hold over you, you have become the servants of godly welldoing, so now you can give yourselves over to a life of integrity and devotion to demonstrating the goodness of God.

The Ethiopian eunuch would have been a competent man of high status in the royal courts of Ethiopia but would always have felt deprived of privileges like having a family, that other less prestigious individuals would have enjoyed. But assuming he read the astounding words of Isaiah that revealed the unique graciousness of God to him he would have felt lifted into a realm of faith and grace to be able to love and bless all the people of his world back home in Ethiopia. He had no one to disciple him except for the Holy Spirit, who would have taken him into the endless depths of the work of transformation that began when he arose out of the waters of baptism into a new life in Christ.  He was now empowered to give himself over to a life of Godly wisdom and devotion in demonstrating the goodness of God to all he knew and influenced in his world.

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THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER

Acts 8:1. Saul fully approved of Stephen’s execution. And then there arose a great persecution against the Jerusalem church, which caused disciples to flee from Jerusalem and be scattered throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria. But the apostles stayed in Jerusalem 2. Some faithful disciples carried Stephen to be buried, and there was much grieving and lamentation over him. 3. But Saul continued to ravage the church, charging into peoples’ houses and dragging men and women off to prison. 4. And those that fled Jerusalem were scattered and began preaching the word everywhere they went. 5. Philip went to the city of Samaria, preaching Christ to the people there, and  everyone in that place listened intently to what Philip said and saw the miracles that occurred through his ministry. 7. Evil spirits, crying out loudly, came out of many people who were oppressed. And many that had been frail and paralyzed and crippled were healed 8. And great joy broke out in that city. 9. There was a man there called Simon, who had been a sorcerer in that city for a long time, bewitching and beguiling the people of Samaria, claiming that he was some almighty person. 10. Everyone there, from the least to the greatest had paid awesome respect to this man, saying that he had the almighty power of God, and they all revered him because for many years he had bewitched them with his sorcery. 12. But when they listened to Philip’s preaching on the things of the Kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were all baptized, both men and women.13. Then Simon himself also became a believer and after being baptized, he committed himself to following Philip, and he was amazed and astounded by the mighty power he saw in the miracles done through Philip’s ministry. 14. When the apostles at Jerusalem heard the news that Samaria had received the word of God they sent Peter and John to go and see what was happening. 15. And when they got there they prayed for the people to receive (lambano – take hold of, embrace) the Holy Spirit 16. For they had not yet received the Holy Spirit. They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17. So the apostles laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. 18. When Simon saw that the Holy Spirit could be received through the laying on of hands he offered them money. 19. He asked them to give him that same power so that upon whomever he laid his hands would receive the Holy Spirit. 20. But Peter said to him ‘Let your money perish with you for even thinking that the gift of God could be purchased with money’ 21. This matter belongs to a realm that has nothing to do with you and of which you know nothing. Your heart is not right in the sight of God. 22. Turn away from this wicked thinking and pray to God that he might forgive the evil in your mind and heart. 23. I can see a poison and bitter root of evil in you which has brought your soul into bondage 24. Simon then said to Peter ‘Please pray to the Lord for me that what you have spoken will not happen to me.’ 25. After the apostles had finished preaching and instructing the people in the word, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many of the villages of Samaria on the way. 

Jesus had told his disciples that when he went to be with the Father that he would send them the Holy Spirit and they would receive his power to become a living witness of God working through them with different kinds of anointings to bring the Kingdom of God into their times and into their cultures where they lived. He called this the ‘promise of the Father’ (Acts1:4)

On the day of Pentecost the ‘promise of the Father’ was sent and Peter proclaimed this as the message to everyone there on that day; ‘And God declares that in the last days ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh’ (Acts 2:17). Philip obviously did not preach about the fulness of the Holy Spirit in Samaria that Peter did in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. If someone does not know that this is the promise of the Father, they will remain ignorant of the need to ‘receive the Holy Spirit’ in order for the empowering of the Holy Spirit to reveal the work of Jesus working within them.  People can be told about Jesus and believe he exists and admire him and want to follow him and even receive the forgiveness of sins, and then to even preach about him, but only the Holy Spirit can reveal Jesus to people and lead them into all truth. Jesus said, ‘and when the Holy Spirit is come he will not speak of himself but will glorify me… All that theFather has is mine… and he will take of Mine and reveal to you’(John 16:14-16).

God has required that people be told of the ‘promise of the Father’ so that they will know what ask for so that they can receive what he has promised. Luke 11:10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are sinful, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

This promise can also be found in the Old Testament where God tells his people he will one day put his Holy Spirit within them, but he wants them to ask him to do this for them.

Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My ways, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Vs.36 I, the LORD, have spoken it, and I will do it." I will also let the house of Israel ask Me to do this for them: In other words - I want to know that you want this - and I want you to ask me to do it for you.

Paul had a similar experience in Acts chapter nineteen that Peter and John had with Philip’s preaching in chapter eight when he went to preach the Gospel to the people of Ephesus.  People had been told about Jesus and had believed in Jesus but there was something missing. Acts 19:1 Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John's baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.”  On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them…

They had already heard the Gospel and believed in Jesus, but it was only after were told of the promise of the Father that they could then receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Paul writes to the Ephesian church later on and tells them about this pathway of truth that he was committed to leading them into. Ephesians 1:12-1 We should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after you believed, you were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise…

This brings us right back to the beginning when Jesus told his disciples about the ‘promise of the Father’. They would receive his power to become a living witness of God working through them.

One more thing… Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter five encouraging them to become this living witness to the life of God within them.

Ephesians 5:15 Look carefully then how you live your life, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because these times are malicious (and mad). Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, letting that control your behaviour, but keep on being filled with the Spirit, letting that order your life.

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THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT  Reading from the last two verses of Chapter 6  Acts 6:14. and certain hostile Jews set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this temple and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face shone like the face of an angel.

Acts 7: 1 Then the high priest asked Stephen ‘Is this true?’  

In order for Stephen to defend himself he determined to enter into a detailed account of their history, going back to Abraham, from the commencement of their nation then through to the story of Jacobs son Joseph who was beaten up by his brothers and left abandoned and supposed dead. Joseph was taken to Egypt as a slave of Pharoah who later made him the governor of the entire region. Joseph brought Jacob and his brothers into Egypt, saving them from the famine which was over the land, and there the twelve tribes of Israel grew into a nation. And after Joseph died these tribes became slaves of the Pharaohs for four hundred years.  Then Moses is born and miraculously preserved from the edict of the cruel ruling Pharaoh to put all the Hebrew children to death, but Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought up in the courts of the Pharaoh and even looked after by his own mother. Moses knows he is called to be a deliverer of his people but one day at forty years of age he recklessly slays an Egyptian who was brutalizing one of his Hebrew brothers and in doing so he alienates his Hebrew brothers who reject him saying 'Who put you in charge of us?'. He is also rejected by the rulers of Egypt and is then forced to flee into the wilderness where he lives in exile for forty years.

We pick up the narrative in verse 32 where God has just spoken to Moses in the wilderness through an angel who appears to him in a burning bush. 

An angel appeared to Moses in the of flames of a burning bush, and Moses heard God's voice: 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.'  "God said, 'Kneel and pray. You are in a holy place, on holy ground. I've seen the agony of my people in Egypt. I've heard their cries of distress and I've come to help them, and I'm sending you back to Egypt.' This is the same Moses whom they earlier rejected, saying, 'Who put you in charge of us?' This is the Moses that God sent back as ruler and redeemer. He led them out of their slavery. God did miracles for Israel, at the Red Sea, and out in the wilderness for forty years. Moses told the people 'God will raise up a prophet just like me from your descendants.' This is the Moses who gave the life-giving words of the Commandments to Israel but our fathers resisted them.  "They made a golden calf-idol and brought sacrifices to it. God let them go on doing it their way, to worship every new god that came across their path—and they lived with the consequences, as described by the prophet Amos: ‘Did you bring me offerings of animals and grain O Israel? Hardly. You were too busy Worshiping war gods and sex goddesses. And I put you into exile in Babylon’.

God had Moses make a tabernacle for true worship, made to God’s exact blueprint. They had it with them as they followed Joshua, when God gave them the land of Canaan, and still had it to the time of David.  David had asked God if he could build a temple for Israel to worship him.  But God asked Solomon to build his temple. 

And all this resistance by Israel to God’s goodness led Stephen to the conclusion that God could no longer bear with them, and a time of judgment had come upon them. The whole story of Stephen’s defense revolves around the temple, God’s dwelling place where God meets with Mankind. Stephen teaches them through their Scriptures from Isaiah that God was going to one day make a new kind of temple with his own hands. It would be a living temple – God’s people as the temple of the Holy Spirit. 

We then read in verse 48-50. ‘However, the Highest God does not dwell in temples made by the hands of men. ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: What kind of a house will you build for me, says the Lord, or, where is my resting place? (Isaiah 66:1-2) Will not MY HANDS do this?’

Stephen then begins to condemn the council on the two major features of his revelation. First that God’s temple was to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and secondly that they would come under God’s judgment for always resisting the Holy Spirit. 

1. You are all willful and stubborn, hard of heart and unwilling to listen, always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing exactly what your forefathers have always done. They persecuted every prophet sent to them and killed the ones who prophesied of the coming of the Messiah, whom you yourselves have just betrayed and murdered. 53 You were privileged to receive the Commandments - Commandments that you have not even kept. On hearing Stephen say this, they went into a rage, and began snarling at him.
2. But Stephen, full of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, looked up into heaven, and he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56. And he said; ‘I can see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. 57. They all began to yell viciously and put their hands over their ears, rushing at him all together. 58. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him. They laid their outer robes for safe keeping at the feet of a young man called Saul. As they stoned Stephen, he called upon God, saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’
3. He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not lay this sin upon them.’ He said this, and then he died.

The whole theme of this chapter in Acts is that God has always wanted to dwell with us, not just from a distant heaven, and not just in a church/temple made with human hands where sacred things get done and sung and sacred things are said. His desire is to dwell with us, make his home in us, as we make our home in him. God spoke this over and over in the Scriptures through the prophets as we just saw through what Stephen spoke. That is why Jesus was called Emmanuel, ‘God with us’.

In the Old Testament the only way that the Holy Spirit could share God’s truth was through the anointed prophets and the way God displayed his power was through his divine supernatural acts of salvation and provision and wonder. All of that Holy Spirit revelation of God’s truth and power was rejected by Israel. Nonetheless God still worked his powerful works of miraculous saving power in supernaturally overcoming the armies of their enemies in front of their very eyes. God is saying the same thing to his people in these days, whether they go to church or not, or whether they believe or not, or whether they even know God or not. God has sent his Holy Spirit into the world, not just into the church. The church can see itself as a temple made with hands if they want to, but God sees his church as his living temple to express his Holy Spirit within and amongst his people, and Stephen is still speaking today saying ‘do not resist the Holy Spirit’. Each person is also a temple of the Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 3:16, 6:19). And for those who do not do church or do not know church or do not even know God - God has sent the Holy Spirit. Jesus even told his disciples that it was better for him to go away and leave them so that he could send the Holy Spirit. 

John 16:7 If I do not go away, the HELPER will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is  Judged. DEEPER MEANING

To convict the world of sin means to reveal to the heart of everyone the sin in their heart. That sin [hamartia] causes them to miss the mark of the target for our life - believing in Jesus.

To convict the world of righteousness is to reveal to humanity the heart of harmony and alignment that Jesus has with the Father, and for the Holy Spirit to make that alignment and harmony with the Father the desire of our heart. 

To convict the world of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged means to reveal the overcoming power of Jesus to overcome the darkness and evil that threatens our soul just as God overcame the enemy armies that came against Israel.

Jesus goes on to tell them that when the Holy Spirit came, he would lead them into all truth –taking the things that Jesus says and declaring them unto us.

When mankind resists the work of that HELPER that God has sent for us, the result is a troubled soul. A troubled soul is the spiritual bank vault of all of the stored-up acts of resistance to the HELPER who is struggling in the inner being of every person on Planet Earth to bring God’s love and truth into their lives, as the Scripture declares - the goal of our faith is the saving of the soul (1Peter 1:9). But we have all learned to make our own helpers to defend ourselves with different kinds of reactions against harm or threats of harm, and these helpers can be very unhelpful to our emotions and our rational thinking and cause our soul a lot of unnecessary suffering. They came into action as we started to grow up – ‘I don’t want to be treated like this so here’s what I’ll do’ - and somewhere these get stuck in our souls and operate on autopilot. Their distress signals are a way that the Holy Spirit tells us that he wants to be our HELPER and to give us grace to not resist him but to receive him. When we open our hearts and minds to hear the HELPER that Jesus and the Father has sent, we begin to experience the salvation of our souls.  The HELPER helps us to hear the message, believe the message, and to be the message.

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INSIDERS and OUTSIDERS

We finished reading in Acts chapter five with the account of the apostles rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. They continued preaching daily in the temple and proclaiming to all the people this new way of life, which was not just about doing what they were meant to do but about being who they were meant to be. We follow the account of the growth of the emerging church as we come to Chapter six.

ACTS 6:1. It was not long before the number of disciples had greatly increased, and the Hellenists (Greek speaking Jews), developed a grudge against the Hebrews. The Greek widows were being neglected in the common daily provision of food and necessary supplies.

Hellenists were the people influenced by ancient Greece with its culture and language and philosophy which all began in the fourth century BC. when Alexander the Great conquered the then known world including Judea. Many thousands of Jews were scattered all over the Mediterranean coastal areas and up into Asia Minor, where over a period of time they began to practice a code of Judaism that became even stricter than it was back in Jerusalem.

Then the Romans conquered all these nations in 65 BC, and Hellenistic Jews were made slaves - but in due time they were set free and became known as the Freedmen. The Hellenist Freedmen that we come across in Acts chapter six were descendants of the people that were made slaves by the Romans two generations earlier, and these people worshipped in their own synagogues in Jerusalem. Many traditional Jews back in Jerusalem viewed Greek culture as a threat to their religious identity and resisted Hellenistic influences - thus the underlying conflict.

In the last few chapters, we have been seeing how love was flourishing in this new community of faith. All was good in the new emerging Church, full of power and love - until things went wrong - an act of ‘unlove’ occurred. The widows who were of Greek, or Hellenistic origin were being neglected in the previously ‘loving’ act of the sharing of food and provision amongst the family of God. It seemed like it was easier for them to love those that were ethnically and religiously most like themselves and to ignore those that were different. This was probably not done on purpose – but it was certainly an act of neglect, and an offence had occurred.

The Apostles wisely saw this problem as a leadership responsibility, and they dealt with it as such. The solution that the twelve came up with was not to preach against complaining on the one side, or against selfishness on the other side. They had to bring some structure into the administrative side of things so that the people could be more mindful that God was among them, and more alert to the needs of those who were perhaps on the fringe. The offence could be avoided with simple uncomplicated relational and relaxed structures.

1. The twelve apostles called a meeting of all the believers and addressed the entire assembly to resolve the matter. They explained that it was not up to them to become hands on in the fair distribution of food and goods for the needy and so neglect their ministry in the word of God.
2. So they directed the other disciples to choose from among all the believers, seven upright and honest men who were recognized for their integrity and who were full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. They said they would appoint those men to look after such matters as these.
3. The Apostles explained to the people that they had to give themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of teaching the word.
4. The entire company of believers were happy with that arrangement. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a Gentile from Antioch, who was earlier converted to Judaism.
5. They presented these men to the apostles, who first prayed about the choice that had been made, then laid hands on those men and commissioned them.

Nowhere does it say that they were called ‘Deacons’ but it is presumed that these were the ‘first Deacons’. They were also great evangelists – as we see at least in the ministries of Stephen and Philip. This allowed the Apostles to attend to the priority of their calling, of prayer and the ministry of the word. This is the first instance of the doctrine of the laying on of hands for the impartation of grace and appointment to certain callings in the newfound Church. There were wonderful results coming out of that wise decision, as the next verse goes on to say.

1. Then the word of the Lord spread and reached many, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and many Jewish priests became obedient to the faith.

Nicholas was a Hellenist, being described as ‘Nicholas, a Gentile from Antioch, who was earlier converted to Judaism’, and he no doubt was a good choice in helping the inclusion of some of the outsiders. We now see the account of one of these seven men, Stephen, going forth in faith and power, with great wonders and signs following his ministry.

1. Stephen, full of faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit, worked great wonders and miracles among the people.
2. Some of the members of the synagogue of the Freedmen, including men from Cyrene (the home of Simon who carried the cross for Jesus) and Alexandria, and Cilicia (the homeland of Saul of Tarsus) and Asia. They then began to formally debate with Stephen, but they could not prevail against the wisdom of his arguments and the power of the Spirit in his words.

Opposition to Stephen mostly came from those of the ‘Synagogue of the Freedmen’, which was understandable because of their passionate intensity of obedience to the code of the Law and their disapproving perception of the slackness of the traditional Jerusalem Jews. Saul, as well as being a Pharisee was also considered to be a Hellenist with a depth of understanding for the Greek philosophies and culture, and he also would have been involved with their Hellenist synagogue in Jerusalem, and this would also explain his intense condemnation of Stephen. It is evident that he was present for the events surrounding Stephen's trial and execution which we read about in chapters seven and eight, and it is probable that, as a student of the great Gamaliel, he even participated in heated debates with Stephen in the temple.

1. So they (the Freedmen and other Jewish leaders) coaxed men to testify that they had heard him speak blasphemously against Moses and against God, 12. Stirring up hostility against Stephen amongst the people and the Jewish elders who arrested him and brought him before the council.

God had purposed tribalism for Israel because they were a chosen nation that God had laid claim to as his own, forbidding them to mix with other nations, and dealing with their infidelity when they did - They had no choice. Israel as a Nation for 1500 years was the representative of Humanity as a ‘People under God’. They were not to let the outside world in and they thought that meant forever, even though God directed them to welcome the sojourner within their gates – perhaps a foretaste of things to come.

So, into this large flourishing powerful happy church in Jerusalem there began to appear those who were not perhaps regarded as the insiders that that they should be. Many would have remembered Jesus telling the disciples when he sent them out two by two that they were not to go and preach to the Gentiles (Matthew 29). We also see in Acts chapter nine that Peter had great difficulty in going and preaching to the Gentile Centurion Cornelius and his Gentile family. God always makes space for a fringe to exist and even though the Hellenists were Jews they were different enough to seem like being a fringe group. This same Tribalism exists today even in Christianity as evidenced by thirty six thousand Protestant denominations, and other religious, and cultural prejudices. All of us in one way or another have experienced being on the fringe – an outsider – what’s going on in there! The church in the Book of Acts did not yet understand that Jesus had brought all of humanity into Himself.

How wonderfully strange that the soon to be ‘Paul the Apostle’ now starts to appear on the horizon of God’s plan of salvation for the world.

1. And they instructed these witnesses who said that Stephen had also consistently spoken blasphemously against the holy temple and against the law. 14. They said they had even heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth was going to destroy the holy temple and change the traditions handed down to them by Moses.
2. The council members took Stephen before them to interrogate him and as they questioned him they found themselves gazing at his face which began to shine like the face of an angel.

These were the Jewish opponents who we read about in the next chapter who laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul before they stoned Stephen to death – the Saul that was the soon to become ‘Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles’. In the next chapter we read about Saul hearing the most extraordinary revelation of the plan of salvation through Jesus Christ to the world through Stephen. This revelation that Saul/Paul resisted that day was ordained to come to the Jews first, and then somehow to the whole world – beginning with himself!

This is the Paul who later wrote ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Galatians 3:28). No more insiders and outsiders!

Going back to the offence that occurred in the early church where some people felt like ‘outsiders’ who were being overlooked – it shows how easy it is to create division and conflict even when you’re not trying to. We read in verse twelve above the angry and influential people who ‘stirred up hostility against Stephen amongst the people and the Jewish elders.’ This is how a political power agenda seeks to usurp power and influence for their own gain, by causing resentment and division and hostility within a community or group, setting ordinary people against one another.

When this happens on a large scale it can have global consequences, and it is happening now. We live in times when there seems to be an agenda managed by influential political power brokers of creating a world full of resentful victims that feel badly treated by anybody who is not passionate about constantly affirming their personal special interests. An activist media that trades in conflict, outrage and sensation coaxes voluntary victims into fueling a revolution against an unkown group of hateful non-inclusive oppressors. This spirit of polarization permeates the soul of our society.

The true enemy is the spirit of blindness over people today, not the feverish people who have been blinded. God wants to reach these people and he is working with you, not to fight a political or religious war against them but to reach them. There is enough love and grace and faith in God’s people today to overcome any of this blindness, firstly within the Church itself, and there is also an abounding grace to hear the cry of distress and to open the eyes of a conflicted world that has never felt so hopeless.

Philippians 2:14 stay away from complaining and arguing so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. Live God-ordered lives as God’s children in a dark world full of people who are biased and wilful. Shine among them like lights, holding out to them the Word of Life.

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FIGHTING AGAINST GOD

We saw in the preceding verses of Acts chapter five how there was such an outpouring of grace and faith through the power of the Holy Spirit working in the church with healings and signs and wonders and the good will of the people in going without, so that they could care for one another’s needs. We also saw how in the example of the judgement upon Ananias and Saphira that there was also great accountability to the Holy Spirit for all that grace and power. Crowds were streaming in from the Jerusalem suburbs, bringing their sick folk and those oppressed by evil spirits and every one of them was healed … And all of this finally caused an angry reaction from the Jewish religious leaders.

Reading on in Acts chapter 5.

Acts 5:17. The high priest and the entire Sadducee group became very indignant. They took hold of the apostles and locked them up in jail. 19. However the angel of The Lord opened up the prison doors and set them free and told them to go and stand in the temple and proclaim to all the people this new way of life. 21. So, upon hearing that, they went into the temple the first thing in the morning and began to teach. At the same time the high priest and all his supporters convened the council and the senate of Israel and decided to send for the prisoners to be brought to them from the prison. But the prison officers went to the prison and found that they were no longer there. So they went back to the council and senate. They told them that the prison was shut securely, and the soldiers were on guard outside the prison doors, but that when they opened the doors, they found that there was nobody there.

1. When the high priests and all the other religious officials heard about this they began to wonder where all this was heading. Then someone came and told them all that the men they had put into prison were back in the temple again, preaching to the people.

The high priest and his other Sadducee officials rejected any belief in the resurrection or angels or other supernatural signs from God. Their religious beliefs were focused on the strict interpretation of the written Torah. But now they were stumped because there were supernatural things happening all around them and they were getting anxious. But this was actually an act of mercy and grace for them also because God was giving these religious leaders a chance to witness God’s power and accept the truth of the Gospel. This brought the high priest and the leaders face to face with reality and an accountability to truth, not to mention the hostility of the multitudes who were being persuaded of the power and glory of God.

1. So the captains and officers of the temple went and discreetly removed the apostles from the place, treating them gently because they were afraid that they might end up getting stoned by the people.
2. They set the apostles before the council and the high priest, and he began to question them; He reminded them that they had been forbidden to teach anything in that name, charging them that they had filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, and were even planning to bring the blood guilt of Jesus upon them.

Somewhere in their strangely superstitious yet unbelieving minds they were anxious that a curse of blood guilt would be cast upon them. Religious superstition and legalism is a curse in itself, as it cuts off the flow of spiritual blessing (Galatians 1:9).

1. Peter and the other apostles reiterated; ‘We have to obey God rather than men.’

2. The God of our ancestors resurrected Jesus, whom you put to death upon a cross.

3. God has given him the most exalted of all positions, as the Prince and Saviour of Israel to give them a new heart and mind and total cancellation of all their sins.

4. We are witnesses of all of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has bestowed upon all that become subject to his authority.

5. When the religious leaders of Israel heard that they were infuriated, and they determined to put them to death.

6. Then Gamaliel, one of the Pharisees of the council, who was a teacher and interpreter of the Law, and held in high esteem among the people, commanded that the apostles be detained outside of the meeting for the time being.

Gamaliel was a Pharisee and unlike the Sadducees he did believe in a resurrection. He was also the tutor of Paul when he was a Pharisee. Paul mentions that he sat at the feet of Gamaliel in Acts 22:3.

Gamaliel then addressed the meeting and said: ‘Be careful, you leaders of Israel, about what you do with these men, because it was not so long ago that Theudas gave himself some kind of self-appointed significance and gathered a following of some four hundred men. He ended up being killed and all his followers were scattered, and it all came to nothing. Then another self-appointed ruler called Judas of Galilee rose up, in the days of the taxing, and he also had quite a crowd following him. He died too, and his followers were scattered. So what I am telling you all is that you should leave these men alone, because if what they have been saying and what they have been doing is just the work of men, it will come to nothing;

1. But if it is of God, you are powerless to stop it; and you will find yourselves fighting against God himself.’

2. They listened to what Gamaliel had to say and they agreed. So they called the apostles back, had them beaten, and commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then let them go. The apostles left the council and went on their way, rejoicing to be counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus and they continued to teach and preach about Jesus Christ every day in the temple, and in all the houses round about the region.

Peter’s words earlier in the chapter were “We ought to obey God rather than men.’ (vs29). They were appointed to preach the Gospel and they had to obey God even if it meant breaking a civil law. The Gospel that they preached was powerful and it was confirmed by God in an undeniably supernatural way. It was therefore a threat to the religious and civil power base of the day. It was more than just speech that was unpopular or offensive to the rights or special interests of others in the community.

They were quite happy to suffer the consequences of disobeying the law of man in order to obey God. It was up to God to either set them free by sending an angel or to let them stay there for however long he wanted them to be there. They knew they were doing God’s work wherever they were. Paul spent a long time ‘doing time’ in jail for God, knowing that God had ordained it, but if God had wanted him to escape confinement God would organize it, as we see in Acts chapter nine when Paul first started preaching in Damascus after being converted and was confined inside the city - his friends lowered him down a wall in a basket to escape being killed by those hostile to his preaching. God works all of these things out his way – it is his Gospel, and his power.

Paul spoke about this principle of obeying God first even if you go to jail for it, when he wrote to the Roman church ‘Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities’ (Romans 13:1,also 1Peter 2:13 ; submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake’). A person can obey God first and also be subject to the governing authorities even when they disobey a civil law as long as they accept the legal consequences of it in the civil courts. It is then put into God’s hands.

There are Christians preaching the Gospel today in countries where it is illegal to do so, and they cannot lobby the government about freedom of speech to preach because they don’t get to vote. In a Western democracy Christians today lobby the government for legalizing freedom of speech to further the work of the Gospel, the way that they feel sincere about - and they can feel irate if they are denied this freedom. As Christians people can vote as citizens in a democracy with the hope that their sincere requests for freedom of speech for their cause will be granted, and if it is they rejoice, but there is no guarantee from God. Faith is not about wishful thinking or political power. There was never any politically sanctioned freedom of speech in the Book of Acts.

But if you really have a Gospel of power, and not just a political opinion about your religious rights or your self-importance it doesn’t matter what the government of the day is - nobody can stop the power of the Gospel from going forth and accomplishing what God intends for it to achieve. This might bring about distressing opposition and personal suffering but being counted worthy to share in the sufferings of Christ in this way releases great power from Heaven - and it brings about God’s outcomes for his glory. When people fight against God, God wins.

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SIGNS OF THE SACRED
The phenomenon of the power of gracious giving that occurred in Acts chapter four where they had ‘all things in common’ was a sign that God had poured out great grace and faith upon the people that displayed itself in a love and care for one another in their differing needs. The last verse in Acts chapter four says ‘Joseph, called by the apostles "Barnabas" (which means "Son of Comfort"), a Levite born in Cyprus, sold a field that he owned, brought the money, and made an offering of it to the apostles. This would indicate that he would have kept his house and any necessities for his upkeep and donated the proceeds of selling a field. That intense outpouring of grace lasted for a limited period of time and appears to have not been seen since. These early chapters of Acts show the contest of the mighty activity of the grace and power of the kingdom of God over and against the power of the world. Reading on in Chapter five…

ACTS 5:1. But a man named Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, who connived with him, sold a piece of land, and secretly kept part of the price for himself, and then brought the rest to the apostles and made an offering of it. Peter said, "Ananias, how did Satan get you to lie to the Holy Spirit and secretly keep back part of the price of the field? Before you sold it, it was all yours, and after you sold it, the money was yours to do with as you wished. So what got into you to do a thing like this? You didn't lie to men but to God." Ananias, when he heard those words, fell down dead. That put the fear of God into everyone who heard of it. The younger men went right to work and wrapped him up, then carried him out and buried him. Not more than three hours later, his wife, knowing nothing of what had happened, came in. Peter said, "Tell me, were you given this price for your field?" "Yes," she said, "that was the price." Peter responded, "What's going on here that you connived to conspire against the Spirit of the Lord? The men who buried your husband are at the door, and you're next." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than she also fell down, dead. When the young men returned they found her body. They carried her out and buried her beside her husband. So great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.

When there is a great grace and faith through the power of the Holy Spirit there is also great accountability to the Holy Spirit for that grace. Such was the accountability in the case of Ananias and Saphira that eternal judgement came upon them through the apostle Peter because of their lying to the Holy Spirit. That grace and power and authority is not resident in the Church today. The Bible says to us for you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6).The difference between being under the Law in the Old Testament and being under Grace in the New Testament might at first appear to mean that judgment is less harsh in the New Testament. However the power given to those people in the Book of Acts through the grace of the indwelling empowerment of the Ho]y Spirit required a far greater accountability for obedience than being under the Law and commandants in the Old Testament. Grace is the power that enables us to do God’s will. Grace is not a soft pretext for not doing God’s will.
This act of judgment had a very profound effect on people still in the process of making up their minds whether to ’join the Church’ or not (Vs.11)

1. And through the ministry of the apostles many signs and wonders were done amongst the people, who continued to gather together in great unity of heart and mind in the covered portico inside Solomon’s temple. Unbelievers did not dare try to join the body of believers (I wonder why not!). They just looked on and marveled at them. When people look on and marvel at something spectacular it is more like watching a side show – it is not worshipping God.
   It is interesting that the display of God’s power drew many into the Kingdom of God as believers but was resisted by many who did not want the control of their own lifestyles interfered with, especially when it comes to money - the universal power and control agency. That power and control is very easily corrupted, as we all well know. 

2. However multitudes of people, both men and women, became believers through all of this and were added to the Lord.
   But those who did believe had such a need for God in their needy lives that they wanted to be anywhere that the glory of God was on display, and they became worshippers.

3. Such was their faith that they brought sick people out into the streets and laid them on stretchers in the hope that the shadow of Peter walking past might overshadow them. Many people also came out of the towns round about Jerusalem, bringing sick people who were afflicted by evil spirits and they were all healed.

It does not say that the shadow of Peter actually caused the healing but something was happening in people’s hearts in drawing them near to God in their heartfelt desire to be touched by the power of God, so faith began to operate. It was like the Gentile woman who pushed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed, and Jesus felt her faith in operation within his Spirit. And he commended her for her great faith. There are many incidences of these signs of external sacred things that evoke faith in the hearts of people who want to draw near to God in faith. The word sacred (hieros) means dedicated or consecrated to God, holy. The word sacred is where we get the word sacrament from, as in the sacrament of Communion. 

When James recommended that elders anoint those who were sick with oil he said ‘let the elders pray over them, anointing with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will heal/save (sozo) the sick (James 5:14). It is not the oil that heals or the garment of Jesus that heals or Peter’s shadow – it is faith. James also said in the same chapter ‘draw near to God and he will draw near to you.’ These occurrences were all occasions or opportunities for drawing near to God so that faith in the work of Jesus could be found. It was not to point to the sacred object but to Jesus. 
It is only when people attribute power to the object or to some person that it becomes superstition, something like magical thinking, and a lot of that thrived in those days and continues to do so. But sacred objects have served their purpose, if only to draw our hearts to desire to draw near to Jesus in faith, but not to be worshipped in themselves. We see these sacred signs further on in Acts and in the epistles.

Acts 19:11 God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

Most people would have believed in Jesus for those handkerchief healings but there would have been some people who may have attributed the power to the handkerchiefs, and others may have attributed the power to Paul. And at the same time that was happening in Acts 19, there were some men present, called the sons of Sceva, that saw what was going on. They tried casting out demons in the name of Jesus that Paul had been proclaiming. They thought that they could evoke that power to cast out demons by using the name of Paul and the name of Jesus and it backfired on them, because the demon answered them, and said “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” The evil spirit then jumped on them and beat them up. They were using the name of God (and Paul) in vain. Just using the name of Jesus is not faith unless one has a living faith in the life of Jesus within them that is working God’s will through them by his grace.

Paul writes to Timothy and says ‘from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings of the Scriptures, (Old Testament) which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus’. (2Timothy 3:15). The Scriptures are indeed sacred but notice here that the active key phrase is ‘through faith in Christ Jesus’, because faith comes through the Spirit of the word and not the letter. The words must impart the living faith of those that speak it, and the Holy Spirit can impart spiritual life and witness to the word as a person reads it.

Some people believe that there is supernatural power resident in the bread and wine of what is called the Sacrament of Holy Communion. But the power is entirely of our faith in drawing near to God in remembrance of Who Jesus is and what he has done for us and what he is doing for us in the here and now – that is faith and that is our Communion with Jesus and with one another as we gather and partake of the bread and the cup. The grace of God is present and to be called upon, as we give thanks for the presence of God with us, and for the blessing and healing of body, soul and spirit upon each other. Amen

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ALL THINGS IN COMMON
In the second half of Acts chapter 4 Peter and John were set free from custody by the council of Jewish leaders for preaching in the power of the name of Jesus and miraculously healing the crippled man at the temple. This had caused thousands of people to join themselves to the Church, and the religious and the secular power base of the Jewish leaders was now even more threatened, but they had no option to letting them go because of the fervour of the crowd’s recognition of the power of God.

Reading on in chapter four.
Acts 4:23. When they were released, they went back to their friends and told them everything that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When their fellow disciples heard that, they began to speak out with one voice to God. They prayed ‘Lord you are God, who has made the Heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that exists. This is who David was talking about when he said ‘Why do people get into such an uproar and fill their minds with useless ideas?’ World leaders give themselves a high and mighty place and plan together to outdo God and outshine his anointed Christ. The same way that Herod and Pontius Pilate, with both Israel and all the unbelievers opposed the holy child, Jesus when he did what you Lord, had decided to achieve through him, according to your own will and purpose.
And Lord, look at what they are doing now. Give us, who want to serve you, courage and confidence to speak out your word. And confirm your word by stretching out your hand to heal, and let signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy child Jesus.
When they finished that prayer the place where they were praying began to shake.
Vs.31. They were all filled with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and they went from there speaking out the word of God with great confidence.

The disciples were ecstatic to realize that God was in charge of everything that happened in the world and that no secular power could stand against God and topple the power of his Kingdom. This new Kingdom was not reliant upon political power or money to influence or to overcome the power of the world – only the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers would win that victory. They knew that the plans of world leaders to outdo God and outshine his anointed Christ’ would eventually fail. After they prayed for the power of God to come upon them they went out confidently speaking the anointed word of God that the Holy Spirit spoke into their hearts and minds - by direct revelation of the living words to them either from Jesus directly, or words that were written in the Law and the Prophets that were revelations of the life of Jesus as the Christ (As yet there was no New Testament narrative).

Three hundred years after this mighty explosion of the power of the Kingdom of God the Church became a secular power under the rule of the Roman emperor Constantine and from then on a secular and political Papal power ruled that kingdom/empire alongside other secular political powers. However, there has always been a river of life flowing through believers whose faith has lifted them into living in the power of the Kingdom of God. The reformation brought great spiritual change but did nothing to change the political status of the Church and simply divided believers up into other existing secular states and regions.
Let our prayer be like those of the disciples in the Book of Acts. ‘And Lord, look at what they are doing now. Give us, who want to serve you, courage and confidence to speak out your word. And confirm your word by stretching out your hand to heal, and let signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy child Jesus. They were all filled with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and they went from there speaking out the word of God with great confidence.

We read in the next verse about another phenomenon of the power of God in their midst which was the loving care that believers demonstrated towards those who were in need.
Vs.32. All the believers were of one heart and mind, and no one felt that what he owned was his own; everyone was sharing. And the apostles preached powerful sermons about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and there was warm fellowship among all the believers, and no poverty—for all who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need. This was the fruit of the Spirit of faith that worked through love – there was no legalism involved.

The only attempt in history to establish a system of economic equity or egalitarianism was Marxist Communism which tried to create a classless society and abolish private ownership of property and private businesses and production. Its ideological slogan was ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. It swept up millions of people in the 20th century in Russia and eastern Europe and China and other parts of Asia and it was born out of the anger and resentment of oppressed people against a powerful wealthy class – not out of love and compassion.
This revolution led to bloodshed and war and failed in every aspect of its ideological slogan. Over 100 million lives were lost during that time because of tyrannical State leadership. Forms of this kind of social justice are tragically imposing themselves upon our present culture as neo Marxism which has expanded the categories of victims of oppression that that the so called ruling class exercises - making everyone a victim including whatever the ruling class is.

There is only one other place in the Bible that depicts the kind of unity and Godly equity of sharing that is seen in Acts chapter 4. It is seen in the Book of Nehemiah. It portrays the caring and sharing of our God given giftings and anointings that bring grace and blessing instead of resentment and coercion. And it is not just about money.
When God’s people were released from their seventy-year oppressive bondage in Babylon many returned to Jerusalem over a period of some years, to rebuild the city and the temple. Ninety years after the first migration back a prophet named Nehemiah who was still living in Babylon/Persia received news from his Jewish brothers back in Jerusalem that the city was still in ruins and its walls still broken down. He grieves and weeps over this and prays to God for guidance and favour. God gives him favour in the eyes of King Artaxerxes where he held a high position in the king’s court, and the king sends him back to rebuild the city, appointing him as the Persian/Jewish Governor of Judah.

But when Nehemiah first arrived and did a thorough survey of what was going on he became disappointed and angry when he saw some unfair treatment to the poor and the vulnerable where many of the poorer families in Judah had to mortgage fields and vineyards and borrow money at high interest from their Jewish brothers who were nobles and officials.
So Nehemiah took action, and he admonished the nobles and officials and told them that what they were doing was not good in the eyes of God. The people changed their hearts in the fear of the Lord and began to share together in caring for one another in each other’s needs.
Nehemiah was then able to inspire the Jewish people to work together with a new kind of spiritual unity where families and groups were assigned to sections of the wall and everyone gave of their energy and their different skills, with a sword by their side and ready to defend each other against enemy attacks. And this brought great blessing from God upon them all.

That story of the rebuilding of the city and the walls of Jerusalem and God’s house, the temple, speaks to us today of God wanting to build us together as his spiritual Jerusalem and spiritual temple, not just the timber and stones and building materials. The Bible says that you yourselves are like living stones being built up as his spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4). So let that temple be rebuilt – yours first – you are the temple of the Holy Spirit and he wants to tell you what Jesus wants you to hear in the temple - your temple - your house of prayer (1Corinthians 6:19). This is what those early disciples expected to hear, and they heard God speak to them and they spoke it out and God confirmed.

One feature of Nehemiah’s rebuilding process was the re-using of the rubble as repurposed building material instead of discarding it as damaged useless debris. For us this represents the Holy Spirit putting back together the fragmented parts of ourselves that were damaged because of affliction and loss and are now being transformed into something valuable and meaningful through the healing power of the Holy Spirit. I see this healing and salvation of the soul happening in people’s lives. God restores lost and damaged things and transforms them into new things that hold a future and a hope.
Let us be God’s temple individually and as God’s gathered people today as we sit in his presence.
2Chronicles 6:29 whatever prayer or plea is made by anyone or by all your people, each knowing their own affliction and their own sorrow and stretching out their hands in this temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and render to each whose heart you know, according to their own pathways, for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind. AMEN.

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IF I BE LIFTED UP 
In Acts chapter three we saw that Peter and John had prayed for the healing of a well-known crippled man who used to beg daily at the gate of the temple and was now leaping about and praising God. A crowd of onlookers continued to grow with all of them standing about amazed at the miracle that had occurred, and Peter was preaching to the growing crowd about the resurrection of Jesus.
Acts 4: 1. While they were still speaking to the people, the priests and the Temple Captain and the Sadducees stormed in. They were offended and worked up that Peter was preaching to the people, and teaching about the resurrection from the dead through Jesus - so they arrested Peter and John and put them in custody until the next day because it was now time for the evening watch in the temple. However, many of the people had already heard the word being preached, and about five thousand people had now become believers (WOW). Then the next morning, the rulers and elders and scribes and Annas the high priest and Caiaphas, and the family group of the high priest came together for a meeting at Jerusalem. They stood Peter and John before them and began to question them. They asked by what power and under whose name or authority had they performed this healing. Peter was full of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and he said; ‘All you rulers and elders of Israel, if this is some investigation into what caused this wonderful thing to happen to this weak and crippled man I want to inform you all, and indeed all the people of Israel, that this man stands before you totally healed today through the power and the authority of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified - and whom God raised up from the dead. Salvation comes through no other person, or through any other name under heaven. Through him alone are we saved.’  When they saw the fearless confidence of Peter and John, who were ordinary looking men and obviously uneducated, they were astonished. They recognized them as being among the disciples of Jesus. Then when they looked at the totally healed man standing there next to them, there was nothing left for them to say. However when they dismissed them under guard from the council they began to discuss the matter among themselves and they said to one another ‘What are we to do with these men? It is obvious to everybody in Jerusalem that an undeniable miracle has occurred, but we cannot let this spread any further amongst the people, so we had better warn them severely that they are absolutely forbidden to speak to anybody in that name. So they called Peter and John back in again and forbade them to say anything to anybody or to teach anything in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John said ‘You judge for yourselves whether it is right for us to listen to what God says or to listen to what you say but we can only say what we have truly seen and heard.’ So they threatened them and warned them once again and then they let them go. They realized that they could not punish them for any wrongdoing in front of all those people, because all the people were glorifying God for what had been done.

This was the first example of ‘cancel culture’ in the Bible. The power base of the leaders of Israel had been massively threatened, so the leaders had to put a stop to Peter and John’s preaching to the crowds about the power of Jesus, but they couldn’t deny the power. The Jewish leaders had crucified Jesus but that had not stopped the power and authority from working through his name from Heaven. They wanted to put down the name of Jesus and Peter was determined to lift him up (today people in the world use the name of Jesus almost as much as God’s people – they use it as a swear word and we use it as a word of praise – one way puts him down and the other way lifts him up. Jesus himself had said that if he was lifted up he would draw all men unto himself, and when Peter lifted him up that day the Jewish leaders had seen five thousand people get drawn to Jesus before their very eyes.
Jesus said to a man called Nicodemus, a prominent Jewish leader who came to visit him one night, ‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him would have eternal life’ [John 3:15]. Nicodemus had come to acknowledge that Jesus was indeed from God, saying that no one could do those signs if God wasn’t with him. Jesus went on to say to Nicodemus that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus knew that Nicodemus was a learned teacher of the Jews, and he knew that he would be very familiar with the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.

That story is in the Book of Numbers chapter twenty one and it describes how the Israelites were journeying through the wilderness after being freed from slavery in Egypt, and they grew impatient and began complaining against God and Moses, expressing their discontent with the food and water in the wilderness. They even said ‘and we hate this boring manna’. So God sent poisonous snakes among them to punish them, and many of them suffered by being bitten and many died. The people came to their senses and approached Moses, confessing their wrongdoing and asking for help and for God to take away the snakes. In response, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and mount it on a pole and to lift it high (bronze in the Bible speaks of judgment) - then anyone who had been bitten by a snake would simply look at the bronze serpent and be healed.

Nicodemus would have understood the meaning of the poisonous serpents, and their comparison with the serpent that God allowed into the garden and who poisoned the hearts and minds of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That serpent tempted Adam and Eve to become discontent with God’s provision for them and to want something that their deceived imaginations told them would satisfy them better. The soul of humanity was poisoned that day and from that time forward mankind has lived with the discontent of never having enough and of life never having enough meaning or purpose.

Jesus took the place of that bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness and when he is lifted up in our hearts and minds, he heals our souls from the poison of the darkness that deceives our minds and hearts. And he gets rid of the snakes so that in trusting in him we can be protected from evil.
All the people had to do in the wilderness was to look at the serpent. They didn’t have to do a dance or offer sacrifices – just simply look.

For us this means that we simply perceive and believe in our hearts and minds that Jesus has taken away the judgment of our sins and given us his life to heal our souls because of all the wrong choices that we have made that have caused us so much suffering and anxiety, and robbed our souls of meaning and purpose. Jesus said to Nicodemus that whoever believes in him should not perish (apollymi) but have eternal life - perishing means wasted, ruined, not fit for purpose. Perishing is being stuck in a life that lacks meaning and purpose here on earth – that is being lost and destroyed - and the opposite of perishing and being lost and destroyed is being saved in our souls.

Jesus also said to Nicodemus ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’.

We don’t have to look at a serpent or a statue or anything else. For us to look at Jesus means to fix and focus our hearts and minds upon him as the highest who came to be with the lowest. So our minds humbly ask God to reveal to us who Jesus is, who loves us and died for us and desires to live within us. And our hearts wait in surrender to be drawn closer into loving relationship with him.

As we sit in his presence today we will ask the the things of earth to grow stranhely dim. We can see Jesus in a room through a window and we can go in and sit with him and ask things of earth stay outside. We sit with Jesus and turn our eyes of faith upon him - things of earth might tap on the window and want to come in but you can close the curtain and ask Holy Spirit to help you hear from Jesus in your mind and in your heart. 

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HEALING RAIN REVIVAL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

When Peter said on the Day of Pentecost that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was what the prophet Joel was speaking about, he quoted from Joel - ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh (all people). That is what happened. That was the start of the ‘last days’ outpouring, but Peter did not quote what Joel finally said in his prophecy about the end of the last days outpouring of his Spirit. Joel said that a greater outpouring of his Spirit would precede the event of ‘The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.’ The Holy Spirit did not tell Peter to quote that part about the end-time final outpouring because that was not the time of the Lord’s second coming, so there is a gap of time between the first outpouring and the final greater outpouring and we are still living in that time gap.

Joel does explain the gap between the two outpourings however when he compares the outpouring of the Spirit to the falling of the former and latter rains upon the earth that occurred every year agriculturally for Israel. Every year there was a long period of the dry months from one harvest festival to the next, when the land weathered and became hardened, and it needed a moderate former rain to fall to soften the earth before sowing and then there would be a latter rain that would ripen the crop before harvesting. Joel says in his prophecy that the final outpouring of God’s Spirit would bring both former and latter rains to come at the same time - He has appointed you the former rain moderately, And He will cause the former rain and the latter rain to come down in the same month. That Is a double portion outpouring.

It is clear that we have not seen the final great and awesome day of the Lord – and we have not seen the final and great outpouring of the Spirit, even though we have had times of refreshing and revivals through many former rain outpourings of God’s Spirit since Pentecost. When the former and latter rains fall upon us in their due time as a double portion of the Holy Spirit the former rain will soften the hearts of people and the latter rain will ripen the fruit of the Spirit of love and peace and joy and bring healing to our souls.

The story in Joel about God’s people going their own way and then being drawn back to God is the archetype or the model of our journey of life for all of us as individuals. We start off on the right track relatively speaking, and then we make our way on our own journey with our own ideas of what is best for us, despite what anyone else’s version is of what we should do. That can get us into trouble and grief – we make wrong choices through lack of wisdom, and we also get wounded through lack of understanding about relationships - and our heart can become hardened over time and the seed of God’s word of life cannot penetrate it – the seasons of dryness of the heart. Sometimes God has to break up that parched weathered ground with tough love (the dealings of a loving Father God), but his preferred remedy is his mercy and grace in sending the rain of the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts and draw us back to himself.

The book of Hosea is also a story of both Israel and the Church as God’s people who go through times of falling away from God and being made desolate - and they too then turn back to God in their time of affliction and are revived. God says to Israel after they have been stubbornly going astray that he is going to leave them to themselves to go their own way and that he will go and return to his place (Heaven) - and that In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.

Hosea 5:15 God says, I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense.
Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. And then they will say "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us but he will heal us; he has afflicted us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going from us is established as the morning, and He will come to us like the rain, like the former and latter rain to the earth.

Hosea is also talking about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Joel spoke of.
When God left Israel and returned to his place (Heaven) he was giving them time to consider their ways in their afflictions and to seek his face and return to him. In due course Israel will receive the healing of their souls from the former and latter rains of the Holy Spirit so that they can be revived and live in his presence.

The last time that God said to his people that he would return and go to his place was when Jesus spoke to his disciples before his ascension into Heaven.
John 14:2 I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also… the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you… These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world… My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father—that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.

The great and awesome day of the Lord is always getting closer no matter when you say it but we're living in days when there are worse things happening in the world than ever before. We will see not only more darkness and tribulation in the earth than ever before, but I have an expectation to see more spiritual activity of the Holy Spirit than we have seen before in past visitations of God since Pentecost, and I believe we're in the beginnings of that right now. Too many good words have been spoken and have fallen on deaf ears and hard hearts, but the works of God are going to become more manifest and that will open people’s eyes and give them ears that are ready to hear in the days in which we live. And while the double portion of healing rains is softening the wounded hearts the fruit of the Spirit will speedily become evident in transformed hearts and minds.
The Bible says that Workers will still be harvesting when it is time to plough the fields again. They will still be trampling the grapes when it is time for a new crop. Sweet wine will drip from the mountains and pour from the hills (Amos 9:13).
As you walk your steady path of grace and truth and love you can expect God to overtake you and go ahead of you.

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TIMES OF REFRESHING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD

ACTS 3:1. Peter and John went to the Temple one afternoon to take part in the three o’clock prayer service and as they approached the Temple a man was there, who had been lame from birth, and who was carried every day to one of the temple gates called ‘the gate Beautiful’, where he would beg for money from the people who entered the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter the temple he asked them for some money Peter and John looked intently at the man and told him to look back at them. He gave them his full attention because he thought they were about to give him some money.

Then Peter said to him ‘Look, I don’t have any money, but there is something I do have that I am going to give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and start walking. Peter took the man by his right hand and began to lift him up, and straightaway the man’s feet and ankle bones became firm and strong. He stood up and began to walk around then he started leaping about. He entered the temple with Peter and John, still leaping about and praising God.Everybody was staring at him as he walked around praising God. They realized he was the lame beggar they had seen so often at The Beautiful Gate and they were overwhelmingly surprised! They all rushed out to Solomon’s Hall, where he was holding tightly to Peter and John! Everyone stood there awed by the wonderful thing that had happened.
When Peter saw this he addressed the crowd, saying, ‘All you Israelites, what are you staring at us like that for? As if it was something to do with our holiness or our power that caused this man to walk. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and of our forefathers has done this to glorify his Son Jesus, whom you handed over to Pilate and rejected, even when Pilate himself was determined to set him free. You have rejected the Holy and Just One and pleaded for a murderer to be set free in his place. You have killed the Prince of Life, whom God has raised from the dead. We are witnesses to the fact that he rose from the dead and is still alive.

It is all about him and who he is and what he does, and faith in his name has made this man, whom you all know and recognize, healed and strong. It is the faith that comes from Jesus that has given this man perfect soundness before your very eyes. But it is clear to me now that you and your spiritual leaders did all of those things in complete ignorance. However, it is also clear that God had declared to you all about Christ and his suffering through the prophets, and these prophesies have now been fulfilled. So now you need to repent by accepting a totally new mindset, and change your whole way of life, and let your sins be cancelled out.

Then you will know times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. And God will send Jesus Christ back, as has been proclaimed. But he must stay in Heaven until in God’s time everything is restored to the fulfillment of what has been prophesied through the prophets since the beginning of time. Moses said, ‘The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your own people (Jesus). Listen carefully to everything he tells you.’ Then Moses said, ‘Anyone who will not listen to that Prophet (Jesus) will be completely cut off from God’s people. Every prophet starting with Samuel, spoke about what is happening today. You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, 'And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to you people first, to bless you, in turning every one of you away from your iniquities.’
The Bible says that the old Levitical priesthood of Israel could not fulfill the completeness of what God’s will was for his people in the Earth (Hebrews 7:11). Jesus has been given a special priesthood ministry from Heaven, called the ‘Priesthood of Melchizedek’ which ushers us into his presence, drawing us into being bonded with him and God the Father through the Holy Spirit. This priesthood ministry brings about the completeness of what God’s will is for his people in the Earth. We are heading towards that time of fulfillment through Jesus, determined by God’s Word from the beginning of time, and the goal is; ‘until we all reach the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God (not just dogma/doctrine but agreement on who Jesus is), to maturity, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, (Ephesians 4:13) and only God knows that measure and the number that will be gathered to him in this way, and when that will be completed, but we can live with this hope in our hearts.
Hebrews 6:19 This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the veil into God’s presence in the Holy Place. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
When our spirit is awakened to this our souls can be healed (saved) and begin to express the life of Jesus within us - not just the natural life of our own uninformed and separated human spirit. Through Jesus our human spirit is now joined as one spirit with the Spirit of The Lord (1Corinthians 6:20).
Those verses in the beginning of Acts chapter three brought the kingdom of heaven’s activity right into the Jewish Temple – and the sign of a miracle healing through the risen Jesus took place before the eyes of all the Jewish people in the temple. Peter took this opportunity to preach to the Jews that their time of being the witness in the Earth to the presence of God was over for this age, and that a new order of the ‘Kingdom age’ had begun. This warning had the air of finality about it for Israel and would require from them a change of mind and heart in their spirits that could bring them out of ignorance and unbelief into hearing the truth about Jesus and having faith in him.

God was bringing everything from the past that had promised Jesus the Messiah into the world to now belong to the present moment – and not only that moment in time but for all time into the future, where all of our sins are cancelled out and where we can experience ‘the times of refreshing (anapsyxis – the recovery of breath -literally ‘revival’), from the presence of The Lord’. That Greek word anapsyxis is only used this one time ever in the New Testament!! - another Hebrew word for revival is used three times in the Old Testament. In its natural sense or application, it is the breathing again of the air of life for our body to live – to be revived. (Our word Asphyxiate - to have our breath choked off – is the opposite of anapsyxis and is from the same Greek word). Our natural human body breathes for us automatically, without forceful huffing and puffing. As we rest in his presence with faith that we are one with God in Spirit the Lord makes us aware of the Holy Spirit breathing God’s life within us. This refreshing of anapsyxis is the new air we breathe of God’s holy presence within us. This is our revival, at all times - the conscious awareness of being present in our hearts and minds with the life of the Holy Spirit within. Our faith becomes a conscious appreciation of every moment of our new life in Christ.

As we sit and receive these times of refreshing in his presence, we can focus our hearts and minds from a place of spiritual oneness with the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and come to know them as persons that we are part of as they are part of us, three wonderful parts in fact. They live and breathe within us, reviving us with their life. Talk to them at this time of presence and tell them how you feel. Ask each one of them to reveal their nature to you of love and compassion for the burdens you carry in your soul. Let them reassure you that they are accomplishing something for you supernaturally with those burdens that is beyond your power to achieve. Jesus said ‘come to me all you that are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you (be bonded with me) and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ (Jesus gives us grace for the burden)

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HEARING GOD SPEAK

Acts 2: 1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place (One hundred and twenty in the upper room). And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3Then there appeared flickering tongues of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Crowds of people were drawn to the noise and commotion of the sound of the wind and the loud yelling of the one hundred and twenty disciples speaking with great passion the works of God in foreign languages that they had never spoken before. Jerusalem was crowded on that day with thousands of Jewish visitors from many regions and nations, as well as the local Jewish population. Those crowds were hearing this message of God in their many various languages. The Bible says There were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven (vs.6) that ‘heard them speaking in their own language, proclaiming the wonderful works of God’... and it goes on to list seventeen regions and nations.

God wanted to get the attention of the whole world that day – and he sent these amazing signs. The time had arrived for God’s eternal and pre-ordained purpose for humanity to receive the Holy Spirit. The word ‘pente’ means ‘fifty’ and it was fifty days after Jesus had risen from the dead. He had stayed with them for forty days upon the earth and they had to wait another ten days. Jesus had said they had to wait to receive the ‘Promise of The Father’, which was the sending of the Holy Spirit upon mankind.
This astounding miracle was a reversal of the rebellion of Nimrod the mighty warrior mentioned in Genesis chapter eleven. He was the king of Babylon (the first kingdom mentioned in the Bible) and was responsible for building the Tower of Babel, which was meant to reach the heavens and serve as a symbol of human unity and political power. This was the first political rejection of the one true God, and in response to this prideful act, God confused the languages of the people working on the tower, causing them to speak different languages and preventing them from understanding one another and resulting in the scattering of different nations and cultures across the earth with their own languages.
Instead of the disunity and political conflict of different nations ruling over the world God had now made available the unity of one voice that would rule in the hearts of all who believed in God through Jesus Christ.
This was the first time that mankind had heard the voice of The Holy Spirit other than through the Old Testament prophets or through Jesus himself. Humanity was being prepared to hear God speak. This was an astounding sign to the people gathered in Jerusalem that God was at work in their midst. Being able to now hear God speak would change their lives forever. It would change the course of humanity.

Some people accused the disciples of being drunk but Peter assured them that this was not the case, saying ‘these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day (9am). But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel’ And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. (verse 17). It is interesting that Peter says in that verse - ‘I will pour out OF My Spirit… The word ‘OF’ is added by Peter here as it was not in Joel’s original prophecy and I do not believe it was a mistake. The Holy Spirit was telling us that this outpouring on the day of Pentecost was only a partial fulfilment of what was yet to happen in the last days of history. In Joel’s original prophecy Joel goes on to describe the events of the end of the world, which were obviously not going to happen in those days of the book of acts and are yet to occur. ‘Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.’
Peter then tells everybody there that they too can receive this gift of the Holy Spirit if they change their hearts and minds and be baptised. and that this is for them and for their children and for all those who are afar off (in time and location - that means us!).
So the book of Acts is still being written!

Peter warns them not to accept the distorted mindset of the current generation, and that is an appeal to us as well as to them. He exhorts them to live for God, with Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.
Verse 41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.
Three thousand people accepted this truth and became the community of faith and of grace and love. This points to the end of the era of being ‘under the dominion of the Law’ and being transferred into the Kingdom of God which is ‘under the dominion of grace’ (Romans 6:14). This was the beginning of The Church.
When Moses received the Commandments from God on Mount Sinai and came down to give the Law to Israel on the tablets of stone, he saw the people of Israel worshipping the golden calf and celebrating in an orgy of idolatry. God told Moses to command the Levites to go through the camp and slay the offenders, and on that day of giving of the Law three thousand people lost their lives. On the day of Pentecost three thousand people received new life.

Pentecost was the dawning of a new era where people could expect to hear Holy Spirit speaking to them in their own language - to join their hearts and minds to his heart and mind. God is re-kindling that era in the days in which we live. Hearing God speaking to us in our own language not only means that we hear him in our spoken language. It means that we hear the personal and specific word into our hearts that reveals to us what he is doing in our individual life circumstance, in whatever issue that we are grappling with, so that we can find his wisdom and know what to do. Faith comes by hearing the word from God not from watching miracles or seeing signs or even listening. We hear God’s voice and not our own voice. Your spirit was created to hear what the Holy Spirit wants to say to you, and the Bible also reminds us that there are personal things that no other person could advise you on or teach you - only God knows you the way you do.
But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, in your hearts, so that you don’t need anyone to teach you what is right. For he teaches you all things, and he is the Truth… (1John 2:27). He waits for you to ask him, and if we really want to know the truth of what we need to hear we will trust him to give it to us and we will gratefully accept what he says – that is the key to answered prayer.
The Bible tells us to ask for wisdom and that he will give it to you - in your own language!
James 1:5 If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him, and he will gladly tell you, for he is always ready to give a bountiful supply of wisdom to all who ask him… But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you.
As we have communion this morning and wait in his presence for a time, and ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you regarding any issues that you might need wisdom for. Ask and give thanks and expect to hear – and you will hear something in his time, as you continue to ask.

There could be a part of you that says no don’t do that - it won’t happen for you. You’ve probably been hearing that part for a long time. It’s just trying to protect you from getting disappointed. It could be telling you just to worry about the problem for a while longer and work on it yourself until some other problems come along that need more worry than that one. But don’t get mad at that part. Just ask it nicely to step aside for a moment. Tell it that God would like to get a word in. Then welcome the Holy Spirit to speak to your spirit. That’s what your spirit was created for.

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THE END OF THE BEGINNING

The dead body of Jesus was brought back to life in resurrected form when the Spirit of Jesus re-inhabited his entombed body on the Sunday following the Passover Sabbath. Only moments after this a number of people that accompanied Jesus from Paradise on his Heavenward journey also inhabited their recently entombed bodies and made the briefest of appearances to their loved ones. (Matthew 27.52).

On the Sunday morning after the Passover Sabbath (Leviticus 23:9) there was another feast that was part of the Passover Feast being celebrated by Israel. This was the wave offering, the waving of the sheaves or bunches of wheat or barley shoots that were the firstfruits of the harvest season. This festive day of the Passover feast was prophetic of Jesus whom the Bible twice declares to be the firstfruits of the resurrection (1Corinthians 15:20,23)- Jesus is the prime sheaf of the wave offering and the other company of people who also rose and appeared to many made up the rest of the sheaf.

Jesus then began his upward journey to the Throne in heaven to present his blood to his Father for the purification of the sins of the whole earth. He returned to the earth that same day same day in a resurrected body that could never ever die again. This resurrected body was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body.

Mark 16:9 After that, He appeared in another form (heteros morphe – an altered form or nature) to two of them as they walked and went into the country.

Jesus returned to earth to Jerusalem and heard that the temple priests had fabricated a story that his body had been stolen by the disciples who had overcome the temple guards and raided the tomb. He set off walking from Jerusalem in the direction of Galilee, where he had said he would meet with his disciples. He saw two men walking together in serious discussion and he greeted them and joined them as they walked, but Holy Spirit had supernaturally veiled their eyes from recognizing him (Luke 24:13). They were taken aback that this stranger seemed to know nothing of what had happened in Jerusalem over the last few days. They explained patiently to this stranger the things about Jesus, that he did miracles and that he was a great prophet and how their chief priests and rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified Him. They said they were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel, as he had said that he would rise on the third day, and besides all this, that day was the third day since these things happened.

As they walked the 12 K journey to Emmaus Jesus quoted them passage after passage from the writings of the prophets, beginning with the book of Genesis and going right on through the Scriptures, explaining what the passages meant and what they said about himself, and something happened in their hearts as they listened to him. They appealed to him to stay with them as they finally arrived at Emmaus, even though he had told them he was going further, so Jesus accepted their offer to at least stay and have a meal with them. During the meal Jesus took some bread, and prayed a blessing over it, and as he broke the bread their eyes were opened and immediately, they recognized who he was and at that very moment Jesus vanished from their sight. This could well be called the firstfruits communion service - a prophetic illustration of how our times of fellowship and communion in remembrance of Jesus open up to us a deeper revelation of who Jesus is as we sit in the presence of God in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

After Jesus had disappeared the two men decided to go back into Jerusalem and find the disciples who were in hiding, afraid of what was going to happen to them because of the rumors that were going about that they had stolen Jesus’ body. They found them and were whisked inside and the doors were locked behind them. They told them of their journey with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and their miraculous meal with him where he had suddenly vanished. While they were still talking Jesus appeared in their midst while the doors remained locked. The disciples panicked, and thought they were seeing a ghost, but Jesus explained to them that he was not a ghost because a ghost didn’t have bones and flesh, and he asked them to touch his hands and his feet and to see for themselves.

Jesus stretched forth his hands and his peace hit their hearts. He breathed his Spirit upon them and they received the impartation of his peace. They immediately felt at one with Jesus and with each other. But this was just a mere foretaste of what was to come, as it would only be after his final ascension and being seated at the right hand of Father that Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell within them. On the day of Pentecost Holy Spirit would be sent from Father and from himself upon all humanity.

He asked them if he could have something to eat, so James brought back some steamed fish and some honeycomb and Jesus accepted it and ate it. Jesus noticed that Thomas was not amongst them and he told them he would see them in a few days at Galilee, and he vanished once more.

The disciples all gathered at Galilee eight days later and Jesus again miraculously appeared to them. Jesus knew that Thomas had not believed that he had risen, even after the other disciples had said that they had seen him, so Jesus held out his hands towards Thomas and told him to have faith and believe and touch his hands and his side where he had been pierced. Thomas did this and said, ‘My Lord and my God’. Jesus acknowledged that in seeing and touching he now believed. He went on to tell Thomas that there would be many who will believe without even seeing him and that they would be greatly blessed for that kind of faith.

Jesus appeared to them again one morning after seven of them had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. He stood on the shore and watched them fishing but they didn't realize that it was him. They had taken two boats out, one larger boat, rigged for catching and one auxiliary boat, which helped with baiting and with the haul.
Jesus shouted out to the fishermen from the shore asking them if they had yet caught anything and they said no they hadn’t. Then Jesus told them to throw out the net on the right-hand side of the boat, and they would get plenty of fish, and when they did they couldn’t draw in the net because of the weight of the fish. Then John called out to Peter that it was the Lord, and at that, Peter put on a robe and jumped into the water and swam ashore. The rest of the disciples stayed in the boat and pulled the loaded net to the beach.
When they got to where Jesus was, they saw that a fire was kindled and fish were frying over it, and there was bread.
Jesus told them to bring some of the fish they had just caught, so Peter went out and dragged the net ashore. By his count there were 153 large fish and yet the net hadn’t torn. Jesus then invited them to come and have some breakfast and Jesus went around serving them the bread and fish. That was the third time Jesus had appeared to them since his return from the dead.

After they had all enjoyed breakfast together Jesus called Peter aside. He knew there were things that had to be said between them. Peter’s soul was in a turmoil of regrets, shame and guilt. Time and again he had asked himself why he didn’t stand up for Jesus instead of disowning him three times when he was asked if he knew him. He had remembered when the rooster crowed that Jesus had predicted that he would deny him three times. What was Jesus going to say to him now – would Jesus disown him, even rebuke him three times? But Jesus asked Peter three times, in three different ways whether or not Peter loved him, and Peter humbly gave himself up to the ownership of God’s love. As a true representation of a flawed humanity owned by God’s love, Peter was mercifully forgiven and accepted. It was also this moment that owned him, not the past, or the uncertain future. This would also continue to be his greatest gift to God, the gift of his each moment to God. Peter was then commissioned three times to feed God’s lambs and feed his sheep. As Peter would go on in life, he would have faced his many imperfections, and he may well have learned to return to that special moment on the seashore, where he could surrender to the ownership of God’s love and shed his fears, growing in faith and being transformed into God’s nature.

The bible says that Jesus met with over five hundred people over those forty days (1Corinthians 15:6). The final time that he met with his disciples they asked him if this was now the time for him to free Israel from Rome and restore his people as a mighty nation. He told them that only his Father had set these times and they were not for them to know. He also told them that they would testify about his death and resurrection with great power. He instructed them not to leave Jerusalem and that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit in just a few days – the promise of the Father. They were to wait in the same room in which he celebrated the Passover feast with them, the night he was taken captive.

Suddenly a dazzling light shone within a billowing white cloud above them. Jesus turned to them all and raised his hands in blessing. He did not need to say goodbye. As he began to rise slowly heavenwards he was enveloped in the cloud, and as they stood together looking into the cloud that had taken him they saw the shining figures of the now familiar two angels standing to one side who told them that the same cloud that they saw taking Jesus into eternity would also bring him back one day to that same place - in total glory and triumph, and The Plan of Salvation will have been fulfilled.

And so, they waited just as he had instructed them, and after ten days the Holy Spirit fell upon them. Jesus had told them he would join their lives to his risen life and they would become one in Spirit with him. Holy Spirit would take Father’s love, and his own words, and place them in the hearts of men and women, as a deep consciousness of indwelling abiding life.

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THE RESURRECTION

When Jesus gave up his Spirit to his Father, before he ascended, the Bible says he first descended - in his Spirit - on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades. Jesus had spoken about these places when he told the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar. The rich man who lived sumptuously in arrogant self-indulgence all of his life ended up in Hades and Lazarus who lived the life of a humble beggar at the gate of the rich man’s house ended up in Paradise, with Abraham. (Luke 16:19)

Jesus had now descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience. They were locked away from eternity till Jesus would now come to get them. Jesus would also visit Hades the prison of lost hope.

The bible says that Jesus then preached to all those prisoners of time the message of the Gospel, the plan of the Father to send Jesus into the world to set people free from the captivity of sin and to bring his New Creation life to humanity. Jesus would have sat with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and many others in Paradise as well as his newfound friend that hung next to him on the cross and to whom he said, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’! He spoke to them and with them and he rested with them. He was to wait there until the end of the third day.
The Bible says that before he ascended, he led the captives free (Ephesians 4:8) from the captivity of time, as they had waited till heaven came to get them. Jesus also declared the word of his truth to those lost in Hades who had resisted God and refused to listen to him, including those who were destroyed in the flood of Noah.
1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them-- spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark.

The Book of Revelation also tells us that Jesus was given the keys of ‘Hell and death’ at this time, and with the key of freedom he was able to unlock those prisoners of the past in Paradise and take them into an eternal heaven.
Revelation1:17,18 Fear not; I am the first and the last: -- I am he that lives and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death.

On the third day when Jesus turned the key of freedom in the prison gate a tremor hit the universe. Power from Father and Holy Spirit in heaven was released into and through Jesus to overcome death and the grave - and that changed the nature of every atom of matter in existence. God had joined himself to his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ and now humanity could become a ‘New Creation Being’, joined in the Spirit with Jesus (2Corinthians 5:14).

The time had now come for them all to leave, and Jesus led them on a triumphant upward journey, to their new home, his home in Heaven. The entire company was escorted by hosts of angels as they ascended ever upwards until they first reached the earth, (Psalm 68:18, Ephesians 4:8, Psalm 24)). There they all stopped for a brief period of time, because there were things for Jesus to do there. The first thing that he had to do was to go to his tomb where his earthly body lay in its shroud. The Archangels Michael and Gabriel went ahead of Jesus to the tomb and found the guards there that the temple priests had appointed to stand watch at the tomb. As the angels alighted the ground shook and the massive stone rolled away as a huge burst of lightning hit the place sending the guards reeling headlong to the ground. They leapt up in fright and bolted. Jesus entered his tomb and united himself again to the wounded shell of his body, leaving the headpiece and shroud lying separated from one another in the tomb (John 20:7).

Michael and Gabriel waited inside the tomb while Jesus walked bodily from that temporary resting place, out into the garden. He walked about and would have recalled vividly the events that had so recently taken place nearby, and his time of kneeling in an agony of prayer when he accepted his cup of unbearable suffering.

At that same time some women had prepared oils and spices according to the custom, to anoint the body of Jesus. On their way to the tomb, they were discussing the problem of how to move the huge stone that covered the entrance. When they arrived, they were astonished to see that it had been moved and the guards were nowhere to be seen. They peered inside the tomb and were met by the majestic appearance of Michael and Gabriel, sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

‘Are you looking for Jesus?’ Gabriel said. ‘He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.’

The women ran to tell the disciples but one of them dropped behind and walked slowly through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. This was Mary Magdalene. And he called her by her name and said, ‘It’s alright Mary, it is me.’

She ran towards him, but he held up his hand and said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and she shared the things that he had said to her.’ (John 20.17)

And now Jesus had to fulfill the offering of his blood to his Father in Heaven. The blood of animal sacrifice had been offered for the sins of the people by the High priest of Israel in the holy place of the temple for the last fifteen hundred years for the nation of Israel (Leviticus 16, Hebrews 9) but Jesus had just marked the end of blood sacrifice for sin for all time by sprinkling his innocent blood on the ground at Golgotha for the forgiveness of the sins of the whole earth.
Hebrews 9:11 But Jesus came as High Priest of this better system that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world, and once for all took blood into that inner room, the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it on the mercy seat; but it was not the blood of goats and calves. No, he took his own blood, and with it he, by himself, made sure of our eternal salvation.

A very strange thing was also happening in other parts of Jerusalem. Hundreds of souls who had just accompanied Jesus from below and who had recently died were making the briefest of appearances to their loved ones.
Matthew 27:52 And when the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. Many bodies of the saints who had died were raised up and came out of the tombs after his resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

After the very brief visit to their astounded friends and relatives on earth in their new recognizable forms, they then had to regroup with Jesus and resume their journey to Heaven (Imagine the strange reality of this spiritual world). The magnificent procession began to ascend from their graves to the sky in glorious splendour with its escort of glorious angels. As their ascension took them closer and closer to the throne room a mighty voice could be heard proclaiming his majestic entrance.
Psalm 24:7-10 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!

At this command the heavenly music began. The sounds of pipes and trumpets, the voices of hundreds of harmonies, and a beautiful range of stringed instruments created a majestic symphony. Jesus had come home, and the Bible trumpets his victorious homecoming.
Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he sustains everything in the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
This was the moment - purification for the sin of all mankind had been made and now everything in the Universe was integrated into his Being of power.

Ephesians 1:19-21. how powerful is that divine energy that comes from God to us when we simply believe that he is the creator and generator of this supernatural power which exploded into reality when he raised Jesus from the dead and took him into heaven to sit next to him at his right hand. 21. This heavenly place and position took Jesus as God and man above any other force or realm of authority that can be named, whether on earth or in the heavens…and he has become the centre of all consequence and meaning in the universe.

All the angels and all those who had come with Jesus on the upward journey beheld their king in his place of honour and joined in the magnificent celebration. His time in heaven for these celebrations was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day, still bearing the marks of the cruel wreath of thorns from his flogging, and the wounds to his hands and feet and side from the cross. He would now spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection, to seal The Plan of his Father and see it implemented for the rest of time. At the end of those forty days he would return to Heaven, from where he would begin his new mission upon the earth through the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in the mouth of Jesus, and Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth. After those forty days on the earth Jesus returned to Heaven and ten days after that, Jesus and Father sent Holy Spirit to the earth on the day of Pentecost and ushered in the New Creation being of God with us.
Holy Spirit would become the bond between Heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from Heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God.
Humanity could now live in the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and win its struggle against the mindset of lostness and separation called the law of sin and death.
Within the human pain of this struggle against lostness and separation would be found the cry of Holy Spirit wrestling to join the minds and hearts of people to God. It is the Spiritual energy of God’s love that would never cease its activity in the human heart, subduing human nature, that it might resonate with the nature of God. Whenever this truth is embraced by a human heart, that heart will at last find itself at home, around the Family table, where it was destined eternally to be.

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GOLGOTHA Jesus had been sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate and then tortured and flogged by the cruel guards of King Herod, and finally commanded by Pilate to carry his cross to Calvary, or Golgotha, which means ‘the place of the Skull’. Pilate told a Centurion to arrange for an escort of guards around Jesus to escort him to the windswept hill. The heavy beam of the cross was placed on Jesus' bleeding shoulder as they left the yard and went into the crowded street. The already large crowd continued to grow, some of them followers and friends, others bitter enemies, and yet others who were just confused and angry. Jesus staggered and buckled under the weight of the beam, but he continued to drag it behind him.  It was the custom to write a description of the crime committed on a clay plate and fix it to the top of the cross.

Pontius Pilate had ordered that an inscription be written that read, “The King of the Jews”. Golgotha was near the busy city of Jerusalem and the signboard was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, so that many people could read it. An angry voice called out above the crowd “Who wrote that inscription? – it’s wrong”, and one of the temple priests protested that it should have said that ‘He said he was king of the Jews’. However, Pilate had made it very clear to everyone that he had written that inscription and it would stay as it was. A few paces further on Jesus staggered again but this time fell headlong to the ground. The Centurion could see blood flowing freely from Jesus now and he knew that he had to keep him on his feet. A burly lumbering man who by the look of his clothing was visiting from some other region, was close by Jesus as he stumbled forward. The Centurion called out to the man and told him to help Jesus carry the cross. The man from Cyrene did what he was told and took the beam and strode on into a journey that was to be immortalized in endless time. When the trek to Calvary was completed, it would take six full hours on Calvary for Jesus to die.

Mary the mother of Jesus stood on the flat terrain at the top of Golgotha along with her sister, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene, and they were joined there by the disciple John, the other disciples having preferred to hang back from the crowd. Two criminals were already hanging on crosses either side of the hole where Jesus’ pole was to be fixed, but these two men were tied to their crosses, not nailed. Jesus was finally hoisted up and then the pole was crudely dumped into the hole prepared for it. 

When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside John, his close friend, he said to her, ‘Mother behold your son.’ And to John he said, ‘Son behold your mother’ And from that time on John took her into his home. Present amongst the growing crowd were some temple priests and other leaders of the Jews who jeered. “You were pretty good at saving others, but you can’t even save yourself.  If you are the Promised One, our Messiah, then come on down from that cross and prove it to us. Weren’t you going to pull down our temple and rebuild it again in three days? Well, why not get yourself down from that cross?”

It was the custom for a soldier to push a sponge of sour wine and myrrh into the mouths of those being crucified, but when the soldier did that Jesus turned his face aside and refused the swab, and the man joined the other soldiers who were throwing dice to see who was going to keep Jesus’ robe. This fulfilled the Scripture that says, ‘They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my robe.’(Psalm 22:18) Dust was spitting itself into peoples' faces on this strangest of days and gusts of wind blew as storm clouds raced faster than usual across the sky, causing a flickering of sunshine and deep shadow. 

As Jesus hung there the criminals beside him were weakening, groaning in their pain, when one of them turned to Jesus. He had earlier on joined the choir of obscenity, picking up the ugly chant with gusto. He now wanted to have his last few words of bravado heard in this dark prison of life and death he had made for himself, and he shouted out.  ‘So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!’ But the man on the other side shouted at him angrily. “Don’t you even fear God when you are dying? We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn’t done one wrong thing.” He then turned to Jesus and said. ‘Lord, will you remember me when you are in your mighty kingdom?’ Jesus turned his head and looked at him with love, saying “Today you are coming home with me to Paradise.” 

High noon surrendered to a deep darkness which remained for three full hours. Darkness took over that day, and in those last hours it put a stop to many things. Shouts of bravado that just moments ago would have roused bold echoes now hung hollow in the still air, and those mockers that had stood close to the action at the foot of the cross now slid back into the crowd. There were Angels suspended within this pall of sadness that shrouded the desolation below and Heaven waited in eternity as three hours of darkness passed on earth.

Then Satan shot himself like a dart into the one that hung between two criminals on a lonely plateau of the place of the Skull. The gigantic spirit of Jesus absorbed the full impact of Satan as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the ages to come assailed his being. Thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. The magnitude of this kind of collision, the sum of all sin hitting the sum of all innocence, would shake all created things.  A swirling sea of fear sought to pull Jesus under, but he hoisted his faith above the fear with absolute trust in his Father's love, as he took every vile accusation that Satan hurled at him and locked them safely within that vault of perfect love. He owned it all, yet he was completely innocent of any wrong deed.

Another missile from Satan hit him. It was black and fathomless, nothingness. It was like annihilation. He was living out yet another prophetic fulfilment of Psalm 22 spoken by David over five hundred years before.  ‘My God My God why have you forsaken me?’(Psalm 22:1) The source of this horrific thought was not Father God. Darkness had assailed the human heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, of the lineage of David, and in an instant, Jesus knew the answer to his own question. He had not been forsaken by his Father, but in his humanity, he had experienced forsakenness for a moment, so that no living soul from this time on would ever have to feel forsaken by God again because of their human weakness.  As he hung there, he embraced the tragic weakness of humanity and touched the feelings of forsakenness for every human soul throughout all ages.

The vast bank of love and compassion that filled heaven filled his heart and went out to a beloved humanity. He looked at the mocking faces out there in the crowd and he loved them. He sent his voice into a waiting heaven and cried out. ‘Father, forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing.’ He had done it. It was finished.

The Plan of Salvation could now be put into effect. Jesus had something more to say but his throat felt parched, and he wanted to speak with strength. ‘I'm thirsty,’ he gasped, fulfilling yet another Scripture (Psalm 69:21). ‘and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’ The Centurion ordered a soldier to give Jesus the vinegar/wine sponge, and then Jesus spoke out in a loud voice ‘Father into your hands I now offer my Spirit.’ Then in one last gasp he said for all to hear. ‘It is finished!’ Then he died. And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

The Jewish leaders didn’t want the victims hanging there the next day, which was the Sabbath (and a very special Sabbath at that, for it was the Passover) - so the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus to quicken their deaths in order to take their bodies down. But when they came to Jesus they didn’t break his legs because they saw that he was dead already.  However, to make sure that he was truly dead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water flowed out. The soldiers did this in fulfillment of yet two more of the prophetic Scriptures from Psalm 22 that say, “Not one of his bones shall be broken,” and, “They shall look on him whom they pierced.”

Who brought about the death of Jesus? Was it His Father, The Jews, The Romans, our sin? All of these played very significant parts, and there are Scriptures for each of their roles. But it was finally Jesus who said these words.  John 10:17…I lay down my life for my sheep - I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This command I have received from My Father.” At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed.

An earthquake tore a searing gash into the mountainside and people were toppled off their feet. Rocks split apart and the graves and tombs on a nearby hill cracked open. People ran in fear from the place, but they did not know where to go.  At that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb, and when their knife pierced that sacrificial animal the true Lamb of God offered himself on Calvary as the final sacrifice for all sin. The priests were thrown off their feet by the earthquake and the temple shook as huge stones fell from the parapets. The great veil in the temple proper, which separated the place of God’s presence in the holy place from the rest of the temple was lightning torn from top to bottom. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’

When that veil was torn it signified that Christ as both man and God had done away with the separation of mankind from God symbolised by the veil in the temple worship, but this opening of the veil had also done away with the separation of mankind from God in all the earth. He had gone ahead for all of us to so that we could live in his abiding presence. We can now have faith to come confidently into this holy place in our own hearts because of his mercy upon our imperfect humanity and we can receive the power of his life within us to do what is right and pleasing to God.  The veil that was torn when Jesus died on the cross was the awesome declaration of the certain hope that we can live in his presence at all times, behind that veil of separation.

Jesus was without sin because he trusted his Father with all his heart to fulfill his own heart’s desires. His human desires which are common to us all were subdued by his higher heartfelt Godly desire and so they did not conceive and give birth to sin, and therefore did not bring forth death (James 1:15). The moment Jesus died the law of sin and death was being overturned to make way for a new spiritual law to come into effect - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and that spiritual law did not exist in the Garden of Eden. It would occur only after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the sending of the Holy Spirit to give us the risen life of Jesus within, and to give us a new heart of compassion like his own. Our hearts can now be fulfilled with a new desire that freely chooses to fulfill the desires of God’s heart.

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PASSOVER FEAST
Ever since Jesus had become the main attraction at the feast of tabernacles and proclaimed himself as the fountain of living water many of the Jews believed that he was the One - the Christ - the Rock from which flowed the water of life for Israel. From that time on and right up to the feast of Passover the healings and miracles and wisdom words of Jesus became more and more awe-inspiring - and just weeks before Passover Jesus worked the miracle of miracles - raising a man called Lazarus from the dead. So, the chief rulers of the Jews had a problem on their hands - what were they going to do with Jesus? they thought he might even decide to rule over Jerusalem and keep on bringing the Scriptures to life, working miracles like feeding hungry multitudes and raising people from the dead. They knew the people wanted this and these rulers were getting desperate.
John 11:47 The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Nation of Israel including all that had been dispersed abroad.

Some days before Passover began Jesus came down from the mount of olives with his disciples to Bethany to attend a banquet to celebrate that miracle resurrection of Lazarus - and Jerusalem was a hive of activity. We read now from John 12:1

John 12:1 Six days before the Passover ceremonies began, Jesus arrived in Bethany where Lazarus was—the man he had brought back to life, and a banquet was prepared to honour Jesus. Martha served, and Lazarus sat at the table with him. Then Mary took a jar of costly perfume made from spikenard, and anointed Jesus’ feet with it and wiped them with her hair… 9. Many of the Jews heard that Jesus was in Bethany (a half hour walk from Jerusalem) and they flocked to see him and also to see Lazarus—the man who had come back to life again. Then the chief priests decided to kill Lazarus too, for it was because of him that many of the Jewish leaders had deserted and believed in Jesus as their Messiah.

After that banquet Jesus arranged for his disciples to have a donkey ready for him to ride into Jerusalem on the day that we call Palm Sunday, the beginning of Passover week, and crowds of Jews from all over the empire we're gathering for the feast. They stood on the roadside in their thousands as he rode into Jerusalem, and they welcomed him as their prophet, the miracle worker, and they proclaimed him as the king of the Jews shouting ‘hosanna’ and casting palm leaves on the ground before him.

Later that day Jesus went to the temple and into the court of the gentiles, a large outer area where there were tables set up for the money changers to sell birds and and animals for the people to offer sacrifices on the altar. These money changers were charging extortionate prices for their sacrificial birds and animals especially to those who were coming from other areas of the Middle East and Asia, and Jesus became indignant at this. He threw over the tables of the money changers and rebuked them for turning his Father's house - The House of prayer - into a den of thieves.
At this show of power many in the crowd that stood about watching and listening to him expected a further show of power from Jesus - surely this was the time for him to start his Kingdom. But they would be disappointed, because Jesus was not going to start an earthly Kingdom - Jesus was on a path to the establishing of his heavenly Kingdom with a far greater demonstration of such great power that the whole cosmos would be shaken by it.
After that encounter Jesus took the twelve aside, and he said he wanted to share the Passover meal with them that evening - that was the Thursday of Passover week. he told two of them to make preparations in an upper room for the event and for the others to go off and spend some time in prayer while he would go off and pray by himself. He arranged for them to meet him back here at the fountain in the square.

The Passover meal was not just a meal but a series of meals interspersed with pauses for reflection and readings from the scriptures in remembrance of the event of Moses bringing the nation of Israel out of their slavery from Egypt after one of the meals where they ate roasted lamb and bitter herbs Jesus stood up and went over to one of the huge bathing bowls and he took off his outer robe and wrapped a large towel around himself and he called the disciples to come over to him. He told them he wanted to wash their feet and so they walked hesitatingly towards him. He began to wash their feet and when he came to Peter to wash his feet Peter protested and said ‘no master you will not wash my feet’ but Jesus reproved Peter.
Jesus had just told them that those that would have authority in his Kingdom would have to become servants not lord their authority over people like the Gentiles did, and now he was saying to Peter ‘if you think I have authority with you then you let me be your servant and you will let me serve you by washing your feet, otherwise you're saying you don't recognise my authority and you don't want to be part of what I'm doing.’
Peter stood humbly in front of Jesus and said ‘please Lord wash my feet but not just my feet but my hands in my head as well’ Jesus had to explain to Peter that it was just his feet in the bowl and nothing else. He told Peter that he was clean inside and out except for his feet just as were all the others except for one of them. He the sat them down and asked for the bread and wine to be served, and he said, ‘One of you will betray me’.

They were all overwhelmed and distressed by what he said so they began to ask him one by one ‘is it me master?’ But John knew the depth of love that he himself had for Jesus and he didn't even question his own heart, so he simply asked Jesus ‘who is it Lord?’ and Jesus said ‘the one who dips his bread with me into the soup’ and at that very moment Judas had his bread in the soup along with the bread in the hand of Jesus.
Jesus let the moment of emotion and confusion pass and then Judas, feeling safe, said ‘Is it me Lord?’ Jesus replied to Judas ‘you said it’ and then he handed his bread to Judas and said to him ‘go and do what you have to do.’ Judas got up and grabbed the money bag and strode out and the other disciples supposed that he had received instructions from the master concerning feeding the poor.

Jesus turned to the other disciples and took a large piece of bread from the bowl and they watched him as he broken it into twelve pieces, keeping one in piece his hand and handing the rest around to the remaining eleven. ‘This is my body’ he said over the bread that he had in his hand. ‘This has been broken into pieces but when we eat it it becomes one piece again because we are one, and whenever you and those who come after you do this in the times to come you will join yourselves to one another and to me and I will be there with you. You will know my presence among you because unless you know you have my life in you, you will not know what life really is.’
He took a cup of the ceremonial wine and drank from it - he then passed it around for them all to drink and after they had finished it he said to them ‘This is my blood- just as my body will be torn to pieces for you so too will my blood be spilled for you - this is a sign of my life and of the new promise from God to give you and all of humanity - our life to share, not just a life of rules and regulations but our very divine life, and whenever people do this in the future I want them to remember that I died for them and that I will come back again at the end of time for them in the full power and glory of my Kingdom’.

The feast had come to an end, and he stood and then they all stood and moved close together, drinking in the beauty and wonder the moment that they had shared with him and knowing that they would be coming together to share this moment together without him and yet with him time and time again. He asked them to come with him to a garden near the olive Grove, where he said he wanted them to pray with him and he spoke to them again.
“In a few hours the temple leaders will arrest me, and I will be put on trial. After my arrest you will all become terrified and desert me, but it will fulfill the Scripture which says that when the shepherd is struck the sheep will run in all directions.”
Peter protested, “Even if everyone else deserts you I will never run”. (Matthew 26:34)
Those empty words of Peter’s resulted in his denying the Lord three times. James and the others joined in with their empty protests and indeed they ran in all directions.
Jesus then spoke his words of total and loving commitment to them and to all of us.
John 13:34 ‘I am giving a new commandment to you now—love each other just as much as I love you. Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
When we can believe in the totally committed love of Jesus for us and we can accept our imperfect selves as being loved with so much compassion, we can then allow that love and compassion to flow out from us into the imperfect lives of the people in our personal world.

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ROCK OF AGES

There were three main ceremonial feast days that Israel celebrated every year. The first was the feast of Passover, commemorating Israel’s miraculous escape from Egypt. Each family had to sacrifice a firstborn lamb of their flocks and sprinkle the blood of the Lamb on the door posts of their houses, and the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites, while the firstborn of the males of the families of the Egyptians was slain. The second feast was that of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, and this Feast celebrated the barley harvest.
The feast of Tabernacles was the third and final feast of the year, and it was the feast that celebrated the presence of God with his people, and it took the form of a festival of joy and unity and thanksgiving. There was a closing ceremony on the seventh day of the feast and the main feature was when the priest invited people to draw of the water from a golden bowl.
That ceremony commemorated the miracle of the living water that God provided for them when Moses struck the Rock at Mount Horeb in the wilderness.

Exodus 17:1… There was no water for the people to drink... and they complained against Moses. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river. I will stand before you there on the rock between you and Mount Sinai; and you will strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may have water.” So he called the name of the place Massah (testing) and Meribah (discontent), because they tempted the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord’s presence among us or not?”

That was the real test and the real complaint! They had thought that the presence of God was not amongst them because they were without water. Our human heart is tempted to believe that suffering loss or being deprived means that God has abandoned us. God was teaching Israel to learn to trust that his presence was always with them, so he provided for them by miraculously providing water from the rock. Paul writes about this in Corinthians.
1Corinthians 10:3 They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.
11. all these things happened to them as examples for us, written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
‘That Rock was Christ’. (The Rock of Ages - then and now and the ages to come)

God gave them supernatural living water from the rock for their physical thirst.
Jesus as our rock gives us the living water of his presence for our spiritual thirst.

Jesus made a spectacular appearance at the Feast of Tabernacles in that final year of his ministry. The Feast of Passover was the next feast after Tabernacles, about four months away, and his ministry had recently been more out in the open and the opposition and antagonism towards him was growing.
Jesus was staying in Galilee with his family at the time when they were all preparing to go to the feast of Tabernacles. His brothers were becoming confused and impatient with him because of his apparent lack of initiative in ramping up on miracles and healings in the surrounding area. They goaded him by demanding that he do something spectacular at the feast, telling him that it would be his chance to show the people who he really was, but Jesus told his brothers to go on ahead without him seeming to imply that he wasn’t even going to the feast. However, Jesus had planned to go to the feast for a very special reason, but he wanted to go there in secret and to avoid the crowds till he was ready, so he took the back roads to the temple at Jerusalem.

On his way to the temple, he would have passed many hundreds of tents camped upon the hillsides because thousands of people gathered on these hills for the week of the feast. He arrived in Jerusalem on the fourth day of the feast and went to the temple and began teaching and discussing Scripture and answering questions from the people, who were amazed and astonished at his teaching. Whenever Jesus stood to speak the crowds would gather to listen. They asked one another how he could have unfolded the Scriptures to them the way he did when he had not been formally taught.

At this Festival People danced and sang as the water drawing ceremonies and rituals were acted out each morning. Women would get water from the surrounding springs and wells in their pitchers and take them up to the temple singing with the men and the children from Isaiah 12:13 ‘Therefore with joy you shall draw water out of the well of salvation’.

On the seventh day of the feast, the Great Day of the feast, as the huge golden water bowl was carried by the people up the temple steps, the enormous crowd stood around watching and cheering, amidst the trumpet blasts sounding out. This was the consecration ceremony of the sacred water, the high point of the feast.

At the top of the temple steps was a special altar with a priest selected by the Sadducees, waiting for the big moment to arrive. When the bowl was presented to him he would raise his hand to indicate that the call was about to be made for people to ‘Come, drink of the water’.

This would have been the moment, when the priest raised his hand, that Jesus would have stood at the temple steps in front of the crowd, who had eager ears for what he would say.
John 7:37 On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, he who believes in Me. As the Scripture has said, Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit’ Jesus saying this at that particular time in front of all the Jewish pilgrims from all over the Middle East and Asia Minor and Greece would have hit their ears like a thunderclap.

Division and argument broke out amongst the crowd. Many in the crowd said, ‘This is The Prophet’ while others said, ‘This is The Christ’, while others said ‘Would The Christ ever come out of Galilee?’
The Pharisees and Sadducees were furious – calling on the temple police to stop him and arrest him but they couldn’t take hold of him. The officers came back and said ‘we couldn’t arrest him and besides, no man has ever spoken like this before.’
Nicodemus, who had earlier on in Jesus’ ministry come to him in secret to question him about the Kingdom of God, now publicly defended Jesus saying that the Law couldn’t judge unless people have heard what the man has to say. Jesus alone knew that it was planned for him by the Father to proclaim himself as the Rock that gave forth the living water of his presence at this feast.
Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their (and our) salvation, our present faith, and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy. Here is Jesus at the end of his ministry saying he was the source of that Living Water, just as he was the bread, the true manna from Heaven that fed them in the wilderness, just as he was The Rock from where the water flowed. Jesus alone knew also that the time was almost upon him to become the sacrificial Lamb of God for humanity at the approaching feast of Passover. And he was the presence that was always with them.

The problem for Israel in the wilderness was the constant complaint of ‘Is the Lord’s presence among us or not?’
but God kept showing up for them time after time. It can be the same with us. That is why Jesus was so emphatic that he is always with us, like the Rock that was always with them, following them in the wilderness.
Our soul can feel dried up at times when we sense a lack of motivation or even meaning in the things that happen to us. It is at these times that we set aside time in his presence, keeping our mind upon drawing the energy and inspiration from him as our strength, our rock of Ages to give meaning to everything that we do.
Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock.
(olam sûr – which means ‘The Rock of Ages’).

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THE WALLS OF JERICHO Today we are looking at the story of Joshua leading Israel in the defeat of the city of Jericho, where the walls of the city fell down as the priests and soldiers marched around the city for seven days with the priests carrying the ark of the presence of God. From the moment that God commissioned Moses to take Israel out of their captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt and to lead them though the wilderness and into the Promised Land, it was the power of the presence of God with them that prevailed for them.When God first told Moses to do this work, he said to Moses "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Then Moses said to Him, "If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? (Exodus 33:14).

God’s presence was with Israel in every situation of their forty-year wilderness journey in an outward demonstration of God’s supernatural power. God’s presence was seen in the cloud that followed them during the day, and the pillar of fire over them at night. There was the manna that fell from heaven to feed them. The presence of God resided in the ark of the covenant that was carried by the priests though the wilderness and placed in the tabernacle every time they set up camp (forty two times). There was the tent of meeting that Moses erected for himself - to go outside from the camp and meet with God in his presence where God would speak with him. Moses died at the end of that forty years journey and Joshua had to lead Israel into the Promised Land across the flooded river Jordan. God miraculously held back the waters of the river Jordan when the priests stepped into the flooded river bearing the ark of God’s presence just before arriving at Jericho. The people of Jericho would have been terrified by the sight of over two million Israelites with thousands of head of cattle creating an enormous cloud of dust that would have been visible from afar as they slowly advanced. The Bible tells us that all these instances of the outward power of God’s presence on that wilderness journey in those days were examples for us to learn from for living in his presence today.1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were lessons for us, written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the age has come.Jericho was the first obstacle in their way to going in and fully possessing the Land and it had to be conquered. They were told that Jericho had to be devoted to God as holy ground, and the Lord spoke to Joshua about this outside the city walls.Joshua 5:13 Then Joshua fell with his face to the ground and worshipped. Then he said, ‘What does my Lord wish to say to His servant?’ The LORD said to Joshua, ‘Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’

Then God gave Joshua his marching orders for Jericho.Joshua 6:2 the Lord said to Joshua, "Jericho and its king and all its mighty warriors are already defeated, for I have given them to you! Your entire army is to walk around the city once a day for six days, followed by seven priests walking ahead of the Ark, each carrying a trumpet made from a ram's horn. On the seventh day you are to walk around the city seven times, with the priests blowing their trumpets. Then, when they give one long, loud blast, all the people are to give a mighty shout, and the walls of the city will fall down; then move in upon the city from every direction."Jericho was the fertile oasis of all oases and had outer walls 2 metres thick and 5 metres high plus one tower, and inside the outer walls were higher fortification walls that surrounded the busy city. Those walls have spiritual meaning for us today. They represent the walls of self-protection that we spend years building around our hearts by either not realizing the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts or by resisting his work in our hearts. His work never ceases to create in us a new heart that knows the love of God, a heart that believes in the work of Jesus, and a heart that chooses to do the will of the Father.Just as Jericho behind those walls had to become holy ground so also do our hearts. God also made a decree that the walls of Jericho were never to be rebuilt – and they never were! (Joshua 6:26). This work of God in re-grounding our hearts is a day after day process of keeping our hearts centred in the presence of God, just as the battle of Jericho was a day after day strategic discipline of carrying the power of the presence of God around the walls of the city. Day after day nothing appeared to happen until on that seventh day when God was ready to go into action and miraculously collapse the walls.His work is to collapse the walls – our work is to be present to his presence – result is an ever-expanding growth in faith. Presence awareness is NOT an idle stillness.

The number seven features significantly in this story and is symbolic of the completion and fulness of God’s purposes in the earth, and that includes God’s desire to do a complete work of healing and transformation in our hearts. Our strategic discipline is also about practising the presence of God without trying to make God do anything, but by having faith and patience for a complete work of God in bringing down the walls of self-protection around our hearts that we have built over the years. We have added more and more bricks to our Jericho wall of self-protection each time our heart has suffered rejection or been misunderstood or felt mistreated in any way. We also put up a wall when we allow negative imaginations to inflame our defence mechanisms, and the Bible tells us to ‘cast down imaginations and every barrier (hypsoma – wall) that exalts itself against the knowledge of God’ (2Corinthians 10:5). Our heart is God’s holy ground because he created our heart to be protected and fulfilled by his love. It is the fertile oasis of all spiritual oases; it is his dwelling place.

As we set aside time to let his presence surround and penetrate our hearts, we create space for him to occupy that holy ground of our hearts and for its brokenness to be healed. It may seem like nothing is happening during those times of being present, but his Spirit occupies more territory each passing moment. And when we invite the feelings of hurt and brokenness into that place that he now shares with us, that becomes the brick-by-brick removal of our Jericho wall of self-defence. A new wall gets built around our hearts – the wall of faith and hope in his healing love.

When we consider the outcome for Israel in their conquest of Jericho, we see that this was the first major obstacle to be overcome for them to go in and finally possess their inheritance, the Promised Land. But that was not the final obstacle of Israel’s taking of the Promised Land. In fact, it was just the beginning. There were seven major tribal nations to do battle with before they could establish Jerusalem, speaking of the fullness of darkness and corruption and sin and idolatry that was out there trying to overcome them, and in many ways it did. But to those who remained faithful, the conquest of Jericho had grounded them in confidence that the word of God and his presence was always with them to guard their hearts and bring them back into his will.

The same applies to us today, because our inheritance, which is the fulness of the life of Christ within us will continue to present its challenges as we commit to live in light and truth. That pursuit brings us into a contending with the powers of darkness, or contention with people who do not welcome the light or who could wish us harm. But with a conquered ‘walls of Jericho’ experience we can have faith to find grace and live out from a ‘holy grounding’ of God’s work within us and through us and around us.

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GODS INTERCESSION The three persons of the Trinity have always been totally fulfilled in love and purpose as the Three in One God, and through Jesus we have been invited into this loving communion of agreement and purpose.1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (KJV)Their love for one another as the three persons of the Trinity was a mutual giving and serving and sharing with one another throughout eternity. We can now become part of that mutual giving and serving and sharing in our here and now life on earth.There is a word that is used in the Bible that means being in personal conference where things are agreed upon and acted upon. That word is intercession (entygchan??).We see that word highlighted in the Scriptures concerning our prayer in finding God’s will in our lives through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Romans 8:25 The Spirit helps in our weakness for we do not know what we should pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession (hyperentygchano) for us with groanings without words. Now He who searches the hearts (Jesus) knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He (Jesus) makes intercession (entygchano) for the saints (us) according to the will of God (The Father). (Note the different Greek words for intercession)

The reason we do not know what to pray for as we should is that we do not know the full intention that God has for us in our circumstances, and his intention is always the best intention, whether our prayer is for our own need or for someone else. We will have our intention, but we will always feel inadequate about how to achieve it - and that is why we come to God in prayer in the first place, otherwise we would sort everything out for ourselves. We accept that God knows best, and we respect the fact that only he can answer our prayer perfectly, so how do we articulate it perfectly? Well, what if there was one person of the Trinity that had a way to take that burden of uncertainty and helplessness? That is the work of the Holy Spirit interceding for us,longing to take on that emotional distress and the groaning of our soul and articulate it in the Spirit to another Person of the Godhead – Jesus. ‘The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings without words.’When the Holy Spirit shares with Jesus the burden that he has for us, Jesus becomes creatively involved in our prayer.The Bible says that Jesus, who searches the hearts of humanity and who knows what the mind of the Spirit is, carries that prayer to the Father for his will to be done for his children.  So here we see that Jesus knows the heart of humanity and the heart of the Father and the mind of the Spirit – so he stands in the middle. The Bible says that He (Jesus) makes intercession for the saints (us) according to the will of God (The Father).This is what I call ‘Presence Prayer’ – us together in a ‘prayer huddle’ with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

We now see that there are two intercessors in this prayer. The Holy Spirit is the first one who intervenes and initiates the intercession for us in our emotional neediness, doing the emotional heavy lifting for us. And then there is Jesus who stands in the middle and takes the Holy Spirit’s prayer and mediates for us, his brothers and sisters, the Father’s sons and daughters. He carries the prayer for the lowly heart of humanity to the loving heart of the Father. As we have already seen, the word for the intercession of Jesus is slightly different to the word for the interceding of the Holy Spirit. The interceding of Jesus is the word entygchano, which means carrying the prayer and mediating with the Father on our behalf.The interceding of the Holy Spirit is the word hyperentygchano. where there is an added emphasis in the word ‘hyper’ indicating that Holy Spirit intervenes with a fervour in carrying the burden of our emotional distress - and articulating that to Jesus on our behalf. The Holy Spirit does one thing and Jesus does another thing. The Father then does his loving goodwill for his child and reorders our circumstances.We see that in the next verse that says ‘and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are invited to be partakers of his purposes. (Romans 8:28)’

As we see just a few verses down, the Bible makes further mention of the intercessory mediating ministry of Jesus.‘Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is indeed interceding for us at the right hand of God’ vs.34.The mediation mentioned there is outside of specific focussed prayer. It happens in our daily walk of life with Jesus. It is for any time that we can become conscious of his healing care for our souls. That is also presence prayer but in another context. It is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘you should always pray and not lose heart’ (Luke 18:1, Jude – praying always in the spirit)

We are always connected to the flowing together with the Father and Jesus and Holy Spirit. We are always the fourth one being personally included in their communion of Kingdom purposes in the earth for us. They want us to know what to do and how to do it.Holy Spirit is always the comforter and the one who fills our hearts with the love of the Father and of Jesus. He has always been the love shedder and the love spreader. He leads us into the truth about Jesus and he teaches us from that truth.Jesus is always the healer and saviour and mediator. He conquers the enemy for us and shares his place with the Father with us.Father is always the one who so loved the world that he sent his only Son - and The Father plans your life ahead for you. Remember, Father’s love for you is as great as it is for Jesus (John 17). See yourself as part of their communion of love. You are not an outsider; you are an insider. We begin to live like we are there for God and God is there for us. It is good to sit and be still – Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46)In that place of presence, you can be conscious of Holy Spirit bringing the love of the Father and of Jesus to you, and simply receive that and be rested and given peace.You can be conscious of receiving Father’s provision for your material needs just as he clothes the lilies of the field. You can receive the wisdom of the mind of Christ and receive creative faith through a living word from him. Every moment in his presence is as powerful as the moment that he spoke creation into being. This is the way to be in a place of readiness in the spirit and to respond to the many things that are coming upon us so rapidly in these days, and this is the best way I know how for us to remain centred in the will of God.

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THE KING DAVID LEGACY

King David was the Old Testament person that could most be compared with Jesus in his heart attitude towards God and in his awareness of his own soul. The Bible says he had a heart after God’s own heart (1Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22). Jesus was called in the Bible ‘The son of David’ (Matthew 12, Matthew 15, Matthew 21, and many other times).

Of all the people in the Old Testament David had about the deepest understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. It was almost as if he was having a peek into the new Covenant experience of being joined to the Lord in his Spirit. He said things like ‘create in me a clean heart O’ God and renew a right spirit within me’. He did indeed have more Holy Spirit anointings than anyone else, the anointing of a king and the anointing of a prophet. David also did something quite outside tradition when it comes to the Holy Spirit priestly anointing. Only the high priest could wear the priestly garment called the ephod which priests wore when praying to God on behalf of all of Israel, but David once requested the ephod from the priest Abiathar, and he wore the ephod to enquire of the Lord at a critical time when Saul was waging war against him. God heard David’s priestly prayer and Saul was defeated (1Samuel 23). Jesus was the only other King, Priest and Prophet (and this is also our legacy).

David understood that a true fear of God was not the thought of God watching us in a threatening way that made us want to hide and feel nothing but guilt for our sinfulness. In fact, he knew that the true fear of God was a fear of being separated from him. He trusted in the loving forgiveness and mercy of God and he knew that the only place of safety and freedom for his soul was being in God’s presence, as close to him as he could possibly be.Psalm 51.11 cast me not away from your presence O Lord and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.He had the true picture of God in his sights and he declared that to God in such a graphic manner. He said to God ‘ You know when I sit or stand. you know my every thought. You chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment you know where I am. You know what I am going to say before I even say it. I can never be lost to your Spirit! I can never get away from you my God! If I ride the morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, your strength will support me. If I try to hide in the darkness, the night becomes light around me. For even darkness cannot hide from you. (Psalm 139.1-10)

While David is the person that the Old and the New Testament Scriptures most likened to Jesus in mind and heart, we could also see that he is the one that we in our humanity can most relate to in the workings of our own minds and hearts. We could even put ourselves in the picture with David in Psalm thirty-two, as in a very humble and honest way he lets us in on his personal struggles and the stresses he had experienced in his soul and even in his body - and how wonderfully God comforted and strengthened him with love and forgiveness. David shares with us in that Psalm about his soul, how he felt like he had let God down and let himself down. He also shares the experience of God’s deep healing of his soul when he comes into the place of prayer in the refuge of God’s presence.

1 Count yourself blessed about how happy you must be when you get a fresh start, your slate's wiped clean.2 Count yourself blessed about how GOD holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from him.3 When I kept it all inside, my bones dried out like powder and my words became groaning all day long. 4 The pressure never let up; draining the sap of life out of me.5 Then I let it all out to God; I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to GOD." Suddenly the pressure was gone - my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared. 6 These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray; when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts we'll be on high ground, untouched.7 GOD is my island refuge, keeping danger far from the shore, throwing garlands of hosannas around my neck.8 He gave me some good advice saying; I'm looking you in the eye and giving it to you straight:9 Don't be resistant like a horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to stay on track."10 God-defiers are always in trouble; GOD-affirmers find themselves loved every time they turn around. 11 Sing together, everyone! All you faithful and open-hearted people and be joyful.

He discloses to us in this Psalm that he had been brooding about himself instead of getting his eyes upon the Lord, but he recalls the truth of what he knows he believes in and decides to hold nothing back from God and he immediately realises that God would hold nothing back from him. Psalm 46:6 Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!He admits that his wrong thinking had tortured his poor soul, but now his right thinking about God’s love and forgiveness allows change. God looks right into his eyes and into his heart and offers forgiveness and mercy and tells him to draw close and to stay close, while David’s guilt and sin disappears. David tells us quietly and firmly to stay close to God and not to be resistant to the powerful presence of God. God has been with us throughout every moment of our lives, wherever we went and whatever we did, just as David discovered. And Holy Spirit is here with us now - having felt every personal hurt and pain that we have felt – He has felt that with us as he did with Jesus. And Holy Spirit take us from those past moments into the present moment of faith and brings God’s love and healing to that pain and brokenness. Holy Spirit overrides time and if we learn to be still and know his nearness like David did we discover that the present moment is the most powerful moment in our lives. That is when and where God acts upon our soul; instead of the past circumstances acting upon it. Every moment is a present supernatural transforming moment of God’s new hope for us, it’s always a new beginning. God is present, his power and love are present, but we must be present to that reality. That is why we practice presence, because that is where and when God is present.When King David gave his heart and mind to God this way he was able to do the things God wanted him to do, and when we give ourselves to God this way, we find grace to do the things that God wants us to do.

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BODY SOUL AND SPIRIT AWARENESS

God uses the number three to depict his wonderful creative design in many things in the Bible – The number three speaks of perfect order and design and perfect unity and function. We see this in the Three in One Trinity of Father Son and Holy Spirit, symbolised in the Bible in the order of our cosmos of Sun, Moon and stars. We see it in Noah’s Ark of salvation in the upper, middle, and lower decks. We see it in the eternal expression of his nature in Faith Hope and Love. And today we will be looking at his perfect design of humanity in Body, Soul, and Spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23 Now may the God of peace himself (peace - Eirene – oneness and harmonising) sanctify you (set you apart – re-purposed, re-designate) completely (to reach the end goal) and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord. He who calls (invites) you is faithful; he will surely do it. That is a great prayer and a great promise about what God wants to do in us.

HUMAN CREATIONGenesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground (Body) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Spirit life); and man became a living soul.In the first instance of human creation the body came first from the dust of the ground then the spirit of life and then the soul or inner life which had to become formed throughout a person’s life. In the generations that follow Adam and Eve the body gets passed on in seed and egg form along with a latent soul. The soul is the thinking, feeling, determining inner life with potential formation. The spirit life is created in the image of God and bequeathed to each individual life (designated to be joined to God’s Spirit).And God said ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ (Genesis 1:26)

THE BODY – HOW AWARE?People of all cultures have always understood that there was an outer life of bodily activities and an inner life of thinking and feelings and choosing, and that these were distinct and yet somehow, they merged together and affected each other - inner thoughts and feelings affect bodily sensations and bodily sensations affect inner feelings and decisions. Only the Scriptures speak with authority about this truth concerning the harmony of our whole being as God’s creation. With Jesus a human body was passed on through his mother, but the seed of spiritual life came directly from Heaven and a perfect human soul was formed by his loving obedience to his Father – a perfect pattern for our New Creation life.

Hebrews 10:5 when Christ came into the world, he said … a body have you prepared for me, for I have come to do your will, O GodJesus didn’t come just to know the will of God in his inner life but to do the will of God in his body. Mark 1:41 Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ (compassion = splagchnon- spleen)His inner heart life felt the compassion and his bodily senses felt this too (spleen) then his hands reached out and touched and healed.Christianity also pays vital attention to the significance of the body in relationship to being - and doing - serving God and one another in the will of God. Paul says the way to serve God and worship him is let our bodies express his good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2)Paul said, ‘It is no longer I that live but it is Christ that lives in me and the life I now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith.’ (Galatians 2:20)

THE SOUL (Greek - psyche). VERY AWARE!The soul is the will, the emotions, and the mind. The soul is created in potential form in each individual to form the character of the soul. Our soul suffers throughout life in the challenging journey of character formation The will and the thoughts and emotions also link the soul to the body through bodily sensations when we choose to bring awareness to them. Just consider in your own experience how much your emotionally charged thoughts and stresses impact the state of your body and think about how the stresses upon your body affect the state of your soul in your thoughts and emotions and your will. Jesus spoke about the weariness of the suffering soul and the burdens that weigh it down. ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Be yoked and let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28)This suffering is created by humanity’s mindset of separation from God – the original missing of the mark (the original sin) When Adam and Eve chose to not trust God but to do their own will instead of being yoked with God in doing his will together with him.When we respond to his invitation of ‘come to me’ we embark on a lifetime journey for the soul, a journey of the transformation and healing (saving) of the soul through the Holy Spirit. (1Peter 1:9)This new way of living was not available in the Old Testament. The only way that God could bring any change of the soul to Israel was through the work of the Law and the Ten Commandments (Psalm 19 - The Law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul).

THE SPIRIT – BECOME AWARE!

Our spirit (Greek = pneuma) is our essential being. It is our unique identity like a spiritual fingerprint. It is the seed that contains the potential for our future temperament and gifting and personality. It is God’s original idea of who we are created to be, but we impose our flawed and deficient idea of who we are (our identity) upon our own soul. those ideas come from what is reflected to us from other people or from our own imaging instead of from God – and that causes much suffering for the soul.

We have been joined in our spirit to the Spirit of life of a loving Father God through Jesus who heals our souls through the love that flows to us from the Holy Spirit. Jesus sowed his Spirit life as a seed into humanity through his death and resurrection, and by the sending of the Holy Spirit from Heaven into the earth on the day of Pentecost.

THE MIRACLE OF RECONCILIATION2Corinthians 5:18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, which is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not charging their sins against them, and has committed to us this word of reconciliation.

The word used for reconciliation here is katalasso, which means ‘a mutual changing of two different yet similar things into an entirely new entity’ (Strong’s Concordance) Katalasso is a combination of two words – Kata and allassoKata denotes the qualities of intensity and of exceeding. Allasso means ‘the mutual transformative exchange of two things to create a new thing’ Let us look at the spiritual equation of katalasso,God in Christ + Humanity + catalyst of forgiveness/love/mercy = A New Creation.God was eternally changed from pure Spirit Being into Human Spirit being in the incarnation of Jesus as a New Creation.Humanity was eternally changed from mere human being into ‘God with us humanity’ in the death and resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit. This is for all of humanity and is waiting to be catalysed by our faith into the New Creation of Christ in us which becomes the expression of God’s love and goodwill in the Earth. Lead has been changed into gold for all eternity. This is our salvation – the healing of our soul, and this is what God desires for all of us.God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Timothy 2:4).Paul is the only one who makes clear the meaning of the word Reconciliation and the supernatural miracle work of reconciliation upon humanity through Jesus. Unfortunately, the word Reconciliation is not given its due in the Scriptures.The apostle Peter uses the word Longsuffering to convey the meaning of Paul’s word Reconciliation and he unfolds its meaning superbly. Longsuffering is the ‘withholding of judgement on sin so as to allow time for the work of grace to bring about repentance’

2Peter 3:9 [God] is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish (apollymi; ruin, waste, render useless) but that all should come to repentance. (metanoia – change of mindset)Peter goes on to say a few verses later.2Peter 3:14 … be diligent to be found in Him in peace, without spot and blameless; and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation - as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.So Paul and Peter see eye to eye in these things.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY SOUL AND SPIRITIt is necessary that we have correct order in the relationship between body, soul and spirit for us to be whole and to function properly in both our inner and outer life.Paul writes that God’s order is for our spirit to lead and order our soul (Romans 8:14). An ordered soul then leads our body into ordered behaviour. It makes sense that our spirit as our essential being should do this. He goes on to say that some people allow their bodily senses to control their souls in a disordered self -gratifying way, which leads to wrong choices and bad behaviour. Paul said. ‘I discipline my body and keep it under control (1Corinthians 9:27)Our soul sits between the body and the spirit and receives information from both our body and our spirit and responds and reacts to both of these sources of information. Our physical ear hears music, but our inner soul responds mindfully and emotionally to it and we even may wish to sing in tune with it or move in rhythm with our bodies.Our spirit is touched by the God but it is our soul that responds and chooses to obey and our bodies can also have a spontaneous physical worshipful response of weeping or on our faces before God or jubilation or contemplative stillness before the Lord.

THE SPIRITUAL HEART AND MINDUnlike any human being before him Jesus had his mind and heart fully embedded in his divine Spirit. He was the ‘fulness of the Godhead bodily’. His Divine Spirit spilled into his soul so that his thinking, feeling, willing and doing were directed by his Divine Spirit.

Humanity originally had its mind and heart functioning between the soul and the human spirit (no indwelling Spirit of Christ). But since Jesus reconciled us (katallasso) we can have a new spiritual reality of being joined to the Lord in one spirit with him (1Corinthians 6:17) and our mind and heart can find their home in our New Spirit that is joined in Spirit with the Lord (if that is preached and heard and believed). This is in the New Covenant promise as seen in Ezekiel.And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. (Ezekiel 36:26).We are also told by Paul that now we ‘have the mind of Christ’ (1Corinthians 2:16). We are being renewed in the spirit of our minds so that we can discern the will of God for our daily lives (Romans 12:2). This is our faith in the work of the Holy Spirit within us to change us into his likeness – being transformed.When we know that our new heart and our new mind can operate in this realm of New Creation life it means that new desires will emerge in our hearts and a new spiritual understanding will come to our minds. These are different to the natural desires of the natural heart and the natural understanding in the natural mind of the human soul.The Bible says therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's (1corinthians 6:20) That means that our Body and our Spirit belong to God but we are responsible our souls in its formation of character.

We set our New Creation hearts of faith on God to the highest level of intent that we can, to know his love and to live in it. It will never be perfect but God says ‘I know the measure of intention in your heart and my mercy will make up for the shortfall’. and we set our renewed minds of faith to fully understand how to know and to walk in his ways and believe in his supernatural work in us. But we trust in the love and mercy of God to get us home. ‘He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it’. (1Thessalonians 5:24).It simply means that we trust the love and power of God to complete himself in us. We get our spiritually renewed minds upon God and his goodness instead of upon ourselves and our neediness. We become God conscious and not self-conscious - and our soul becomes healed, saved, transformed, completed, and our bodies can do what they were created to do. Just do it.

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ENOCH WALKED WITH GODGenesis 5:21 Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, "and was not found, because God had taken him"; for before he was taken, he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

These two accounts, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament present a very brief account of Enoch’s life but they embody the major themes of the story of Enoch’s existence on the earth. We read of some ordinary facts like the timeline of his life on earth and some scarce family details. And we also read of the most extraordinary circumstance of his being translated directly into Heaven to be with God without having to die a natural death. We also read about his exceptional walk of faith with God, a walk so close and so pleasing to God that God appears to have said ‘Let’s continue this wonderful walk together up here because you don’t need any more time down there trying to transcend the material disorder of things – you’re living so much above it all that you might as well be totally here instead.’ His testimony of faith was so remarkable that the Bible marks his experience as a model of what the process of real faith is all about when it goes on to say ‘But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him’.

It might seem that this is the sum total of what we need to know about Enoch - he finished the course back in Genesis and enjoyed the rest of his existence involved in his heavenly existence and not involved with things on earth. But then another astounding Scripture is found in the New Testament in the book of Jude that mentions Enoch as a prophet who has something powerful and significant to say about the End Times judgement and the return of The Lord Jesus. Jude is writing to the church about the judgement to come upon ungodly men who have infiltrated the church and defiled it with their lewdness (aselgeia – corrupt and filthy behaviour).

Jude 1:14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them.

So now to bring the Enoch narrative more up to date we need to look at what else is embedded in the words spoken about Enoch and the words spoken by Enoch.There is some remarkable symbolism found in two of the numerals in the Genesis account and in the Jude account. The numerals are seven and three hundred.In Jude it says that Enoch was the seventh from Adam – seven means completion or perfection which casts Enoch’s life as a shadow of Jesus, who walked perfectly with God.In Genesis 5:21 it says that Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and three hundred speaks of overcoming and being protected from the enemy of darkness and death. 

Noah’s ark was three hundred cubits in length and the ark overcame the flood and the judgement of death upon the earth at that time in history (Enoch was Noah’s great grandfather)Gideon overcame impossible odds with three hundred fighting men to win victory over the hordes of thousands of the Midianites who were attacking God’s people. There were three hundred golden shields in Solomon’s Armory, (1Kings 10:17) and these golden shields were a symbol of divine protection. 1 Chronicles 22:9 I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.The meaning of the Hebrew word for shield (s?inâ) is strength, protection, defence against an enemy. It is the same as that used in God’s promise to Abram. “Do not be afraid, Abram: I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Genesis 15:1). Enoch was taken out of the world and did not see death.

ENOCH THE PROPHET OF REVELATIONIs it any wonder then that Enoch who prophesied of the Second Coming of Jesus according to the book of Jude verse 14 prophesies that word again after 17 more verses in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation which is the following book of the Bible?  ‘Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7)’The words of the messenger (aggelos – angel) establish this thought when we read the account of John falling at the feet of the messenger to worship him and the messenger puts John in the picture of what is happening and who he is.

Revelation 22:8 Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel (aggelos - messenger) who showed me these things. Then he (the messenger) said to me, "See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and one of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep (adhere to and honour) the words of this book. Worship God." And he said to me, "Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand (in \other words say what now has to be said). He who is unjust, let him be unjust still and the filthy be filthy still, and the righteous do right still, and the holy be holy still “See, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me, to repay everyone according to the deeds he has done.

This becomes the third time that Enoch’s prophecy gets spoken concerning the return of the Lord and of judgement and reward.

AN ENOCH GENERATIONThe Bible says that it is appointed for man once to die and then comes the judgement.Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.So why didn’t Enoch have that appointment?Simply because the Word of God can give permission for that – and that is the only way that ‘not seeing death’ can occur - By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, "and was not found, because God had taken him"(Hebrews 11:5)The Word of God also gives that permission to an entire generation of people who will be alive until the Lord returns.Psalm 102:18 This will be written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD. For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; From heaven the LORD viewed the earth, To hear the groaning of the prisoner, to release those appointed to death.That truth concerning permission for cancelling that appointment is also found twice in the New Testament.1Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the Lord. 1Corinthians 15:51 We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

Many generations have supposed that theirs could be the one that saw the return of Jesus. Most markedly was the generation that was still alive after Jesus ascended into Heaven. There were two angels standing by when he ascended who said "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11). There was no reason for them not to believe that his return would be imminent, and many Christians were conjecturing this, perhaps even Paul himself as we just read what he said in Corinthians and Thessalonians. Paul then brought a correction in 2Thessalonians 2 when he said ‘And now, what about the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to meet him? Please don’t be upset and excited, dear brothers, by the rumor that this day of the Lord has already begun. If you hear of people having visions and special messages from God about this, or letters that are supposed to have come from me, don’t believe them. Don’t be carried away and deceived regardless of what they say. For that day will not come until two things happen: first, there will be a time of great rebellion against God, and then the man of rebellion will come—the son of hell.’Those scriptures have been there for 2000 years but for over 1500 years the ordinary churchgoer had no access to the Bible so there was no broad speculation about the Second Coming. There has however been much in the last three or four hundred years and that remains to this day.

The point is that every generation that knows these things should live as if Jesus was perhaps returning in their generation. Enoch represents a generation that shall be loosed from their appointment with death, and the way to live that kind of life is the way Enoch modelled his life to us. He was a man who modelled the ‘three hundred’ class of spirit. He walked with God for three hundred years and was lifted above the corruption that his grandson Noah contended with and who built an ark of three hundred cubits providing safety for his family from judgment and destruction. His life speaks to us of the closeness of our walk with God that lifts us above the corruption of the world. It also models to us the three hundred golden shields of Solomon that are shields of God’s protection over our souls that give us strength and peace, and it points us to the overcoming spirit of Gideon that gives us courage and victory over the power of the enemy. Enoch was the seventh from Adam - The number seven speaks of completion - and God will have completed a work of grace in that generation. That generation will also have a ‘seventh from Adam’ class of spirit, As the Psalm said about that generation - a people yet to be created will praise the LORD.

The work of grace that will be completed in that generation will bring praise to God from a people who know how to give thanks to God in all things. In any situation our freedom comes from getting our eyes off ourselves and onto God. That is always the starting point – we go from painful self-consciousness to joyful God consciousness. Not waiting for the bad thing to happen but waiting and expecting the good thing of God’s work to manifest. This requires thinking from the believing mind that is seated in our spirit not from the thoughts that are attached to the emotions of our soul.  

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MORE THAN ALL WE ASK OR THINK

Ephesians 3:18 … that being grounded in love, all you who believe may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

That Scripture holds the most boundless and unlimited promise of the unveiling of the Reality of the power of God’s love. It actually states that we can be filled with all the fullness of God! We are living in times when God is revealing (apocalypto) everything that needs to be exposed and to be seen for what it is, the good and the bad. One word describes what God is revealing – Reality.When something gets exposed for what it really is we don’t have to guess anymore. That includes everything we see in the world around us, in politics, in culture, in religion, and most of all, in ourselves. What God wants to reveal to us about us is the Reality of who we really are as created in his image and as being transformed into his likeness.

Becoming our true self is a gradual process, but that Reality can be certain and abiding if we make a deliberate and conscious movement of our hearts and minds towards the boundless spirit of God’s love towards us. We unseat our struggling false self (which doesn’t want to die!) and which is based upon a fearful defective idea of who we are. We have as it were two lions within us fighting to have us. One is the lion that the Bible talks about as devil, as the lion that goes about seeking to devour – the other is Jesus, the Lion of Judah – and it depends upon which one that we feed as to which one dies off or survives. We can progressively free ourselves from what darkness has told us regarding what we are and who we are, and we can enlarge the boundaries of our faith to believe God’s idea of who we are, and we become the partakers of an abundant life in God and of God. The limits of this enlargement are yet to be realized in this earthly life – always within reach but never fully grasped by anyone (except Jesus). But Paul still urges us to pursue this fullness of God’s love within us, giving us his own pursuit for this as an example to us. He says ‘not that I have already attained this or am already perfect, but I press on to this goal to make it my own: forgetting what lies behind I reach forward for the prize of this uppermost invitation of God in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians3 :12).It matters not how old we are but how sincere and willing we are, and transformation is inevitable. Nothing but our own apathy and limited desire limits this realization. Resisting this work of the Holy Spirit causes us all great and needless inner suffering.

What is the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love?If we can picture these measures as vertical and horizontal dimensions in space, we would see the Reality of our life in the present moment - that God’s love is actively moving upon every aspect of our lives.

Breadth is the Reality of what happens in the horizontal dimension of your world.The Length is the Reality of the timeline of your life, which is also a horizontal dimension with your past behind you and your future in front of you.The height and depth are the Reality of God’s love acting upon you in a vertical dimension – from Heaven above and down to you into the depth of your heart of faith.

BREADTHImagine yourself positioned in the very centre of these vertical and horizontal lines andas you rotated slowly around in a 360 degree turn you would be seeing the breadth of what is going on around you in your world. That represents all of the living creatures and non-living objects of God’s natural creation – the trees and rocks and oceans and the sparrow that falls from the sky, all born out of his love – the beauty and the wonder of it all, that we appreciate and care for. And it represents all the people, the humanity that he loves, all created in his image. But we also acknowledge the many activities of those many people that can be grievously unlovely in their pursuit of pleasure and power. And all of that unlovely is a reflection of Mankind’s general lack of understanding of God’s love. Our reaction to the unlovely and our contribution to the unlovely is also a measure of our understanding of God’s love. We can be so aware of the unlovely of all of this to the point that we are not aware of the movement of God’s love in the midst of it all (for God so loved the world…).

Our comprehension of the breadth of God’s love is a condition of awareness, a direct perception, not an opinion or an idea. His love is the Reality, and all that unlove is a reality that is now being exposed more than ever. Where are we? Do we pour God’s love into our world or add to the unlove?

It is only to the degree of our comprehension of the love of God toward us that we can comprehend his love for the world and his desire for our partnership with him in that redemptive love. We are not to confuse our partnership with God’s love for the natural world with an ideological commitment to saving the planet from extinction, nor are we to struggle with a self-conscious human compassion that fails to right all the wrongs of this world. Instead, we enlarge the sphere of God’s love into the breadth our inner life and we enlarge the sphere of our influence of his love into the entire breadth of our personal world. The ultimate Reality is that God’s world is a love born and love driven world, and unlove can be overcome by God’s love.

LENGTHAs you remain in the centre of those dimensions there is a horizontal line that comes from behind you and through you and goes out in front of you. That is the timeline of your life, with your past behind you and your future in front of you – and the present moment with you. This timeline is a dimension that can be filled to abundance with the love of God. Unlove towards us in our past has scarred our souls and wounded our spirits. And our unloving reactions to others and to ourselves because of this mistreatment can block our pathways forward in believing in God’s love toward us. The reason that we were scarred, or wounded is because we felt alone in that experience, and vulnerable and unprotected. If someone loving and strong had been there with us and holding us close, we would have been strengthened by that support and even endured the mistreatment with some distress but without as much harm. The fact is that someone loving and strong was with us, but we didn’t know it. Jesus was there all the time.

The beautiful reality is that right now the Holy Spirit can reveal this Reality to us. He was there all the time and is here now and he felt every sensation of our personal hurt and pain as he did with Jesus and he can take us from that past moment into the present moment of faith and reveal Jesus who heals that pain and brokenness. Our brokenness is a reality of life that we can admit to without feeling shame because we are never cut off from God’s love – it has always been there but we didn’t know it. Brokenness does not mean a lack of wholeness, but it means that in the disappointments of life we can now learn to trust God to give us hope for the future rather than be stuck in the hopelessness of not knowing and of doing things our way. That becomes our present Reality of his strength in our weakness, and his peace in our struggles, as we become more and more filled with ‘the fullness of God’. Our times and seasons are in his hands - He holds the future

HEIGHT This is the vertical dimension of the Reality of God’s love coming upon us from the Heavens, and our faith that reaches up to meet it. Psalm 36:5 Your love oh Lord reaches to the heavens Your faithfulness stretches to the sky Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice flows Like the ocean's tide.The Bible tells us to set our minds on things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, and not to let our hearts and minds get bogged down with things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:1).As we open ourselves to this Reality of his love flowing towards us, his tide flowing in and our faith rising up become one movement of love, and the grace of God can keep this at the flood.The strong tide of the transcendent life and love of God will inevitably rise within us and lift us into a consciousness which opens and expands us to receive its fullness.

DEPTHThis is the vertical dimension of God’s love plumbing the depths of our heart - and as much as we are able, we surrender to that love, willing for that love to lay hold of us. This is different to trying to work up in our own strength an action of love towards God, which is such an elusive and confusing activity.The surrendered self does not act, but it first receives and then it can act from there. Our only struggle is to enter into that rest of surrender which creates space for the ocean of God’s Being to fill it. This such a difficult path – but God initiates it.

God’s loving and purposeful thoughts towards us are unmeasurable compared to our fleeting loving and purposeful thoughts towards him. How precious toward me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! (Psalm 139:17). This is not opinion or mere human perception – this is the Reality of the operation of the love of God. As we live in this atmosphere of Reality, we will, in fact, in our everyday selves become more real. So let us return to the original Scripture and quote the first section only ‘to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. This is all about the unimaginable concept of an ordinary person being filled with all the fulness of God!

It is made possible by the fact that Jesus has made his own life available for us to live in, while he himself lives within us through the power of the Holy Spirit.This love becomes the ground of our being and the motivation for our doing. But our doing does not compare (again) with the wonder of his doing, which is described now in the second section of that original Scripture. ‘Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. If we can see this picture of every dimension of our life within God’s love - everything that is going on in the world around us right now, everything that can be healed from our past, and everything that awaits us in the future – all poured out from above and swelling our waiting hearts of faith – then we will comprehend with humble simplicity all that we need to know about our life - More than all we ask or think.

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I HAVE COME TO BRING A SWORD

Matthew 10:34 Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.Jesus was quoting a Scripture from the Book of Micah the prophet, who felt the burden of serving God above all else when many of God’s people were serving all else above God.For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother,the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. But as for me, I look to the LORD; I wait for the God of my salvation. my God hears me (Micah7:6)

‘I come to bring a sword’ would ordinarily be received in the sense of saying that the whole purpose for Jesus coming to us is for him to bring division.This is not what this Scripture is saying. ‘I come to bring a sword’ is describing division as the primary effect of what happens when the word of Jesus comes to proclaim the inner kingdom of God. It divides the self-centred focus of our life from his Kingdom centred focus of our life.

If a business management consultant visits a corporate workplace with the purpose of bringing efficiency and productivity, he will discuss the order and disorder of what is happening in the company. He will then set about how to prioritise goals and roles, and some staff may be moved around or displaced and replaced. His comments will have the immediate effect of ‘shaking things up’ and revealing the disorder and chaos. He is not bringing the chaos and disorder, but he is bringing the sword of division that divides between order and disorder. People don’t generally like that. Here is an example of what Jesus was experiencing in his own life, as the SWORD OF THE WORD OF LIFE that people could believe or reject, to either live for or live without.

Matthew 12:46 As Jesus was speaking in a crowded house, his mother and brothers were outside, wanting to talk with him. When someone told him they were there, he remarked, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He pointed to his disciples. “Look!” he said, “these are my mother and brothers.” Then he added, “Anyone who obeys my Father in heaven is my brother, sister, and mother!”

That was certainly a shakeup and a wakeup for all those people, and for all of us reading these difficult Scriptures. Jesus was not speaking personally against his mother and his brothers. Jesus knew full well of his own mother Mary’s obedience to his Heavenly Father and her devotion to himself and his Father’s mission. Mary had lived with that sword piercing her heart from before Jesus was born, and in due course his own brothers would become his disciples. Jesus had brought to all of humanity the greatest gift of life that had ever existed and would ever exist. Israel up to this point had received the best that was on offer as declared by promise to Abraham two thousand years before that time and then to Moses through the law and blood sacrifices. Jesus had but a short time to make it clear what was on offer for mankind and he spoke and acted clearly and compellingly at all times. He was saying ‘you can have not only a better life, but you can have the best life – believe it and receive it!’ It means a surrender of our life to his and a surrender of our will to his. That is the cross in our lives - where our will crosses God’s will. The vertical dimension of the cross is God’s will from Heaven – the horizontal dimension is our will on the earth. Where that crosses is where the sword is applied to our lives.

Jesus also experienced the work of the sword bringing division and reorder in his own hometown.Matthew 13:54 Coming to His hometown, He taught the people in their synagogue, and they were astonished. “Where did this man get such wisdom and miraculous powers?” they asked. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son, and aren’t his brother’s names James and Joseph and Simon and Judas (not Iscariot)? And aren’t all his sisters with us as well? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they were offended at him.

Jesus also had to put up with the unbelief of his brothers in his own family who didn’t yet believe that he was the Messiah. Perhaps they were too used to seeing him as the older brother reminding them of things like showing more respect to their mother or being more diligent with their work in their father Joseph’s carpentry shop. Like most of humanity then and now, they wanted more outward proof of his supernatural power so that he could impress the crowds more, and also convince them as we see in the following Scripture – but for Jesus the power he came to exercise was for the inner lives of people to be transformed. John 7:2 But soon it was time for the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the annual Jewish holidays, and Jesus’ brothers urged him to go to Judea for the celebration. “Go where more people can see your miracles!” they jeered. “You can’t be famous when you hide like this! If you’re so great, prove it to the world!” For even his brothers didn’t believe in him!

The sword was operating in Judea, and in his own hometown, and even in his own home. For Jesus the miracles were an advertising billboard, and they did get the attention of people to see that something powerful was going on. But that was not his aim in coming to earth. A sign is a signpost that points to something far greater and for Jesus the greater thing was not the outward display but the inward life of his Kingdom at work within us. The power that he came to release in the earth was to be exercised in the hearts of men and women, not just for an outward show of power but an inward power and authority to display the nature of God in the earth, for people to become one with him in the spirit.

Mary the mother of Jesus fully understood this conflict between the inner and outer life concerning her son Jesus. After Simeon the prophet spoke to Mary and Joseph at the time of his dedication in the temple, he prophesied over her, saying.‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many may be revealed – and a sword will pierce your heart also’ (Luke 2:34)Mary lived with that SWORD OF GOD’S WORD in her life. She had said ‘Be it done unto me according to thy Word’ to the angel Gabrielle when he announced that she would be the mother of Jesus. Mary had to contend with the continual sorrow of knowing that her son was destined to be opposed by his own people and suffer the fate of all of Israel’s prophets, just as did her nephew, John the Baptist who was beheaded by Herod. And she lived with the fact that even her other sons that she loved opposed and disparaged him.

God comes to first expose the chaos and disorder of this world and its lack of love and lack of faith in action. And the sword must come and work in us first, allowing the work of the Holy Spirit to bring us close to himself in mercy and grace to reorder our souls first. The Holy Spirit calls us into the surrender of the rest of faith so that we can obtain mercy and find grace and come from an inner place of love and peace in our relationships.

Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

I love to see the supernatural work of God, the miracle work of God. And I have seen it, and I do see it. This work is happening continually if you know where to look. This work happens in the ordinary day to day occurrences where people take up their cross and follow Jesus and lay down their lives for one another and are being transformed into His likeness. (illustration of the horizontal and vertical aspects of the cross) If you’re looking for signs and wonders as a priority you will run after the signposts to find them, and the signposts are impressive, but they don’t deliver the way the marketing says they will. If you are looking for changed hearts of love and faith starting with your own life the signs will follow you and you will recognise them as being God’s confirmation of the SWORD OF GOD’S WORD at work in your life, dividing between soul and spirit and bringing about his will in your life through occurrences and events that you could not possibly have planned.

Further on from the quotation of Jesus from Micah 7:6 we read Micah 7:14 where finally Micah prays to the Lord - ‘Shepherd your people with your staf,f the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in the midst of a forest… And the Lord answers Micah back…I will show them marvellous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might. They shall lay their hands on their mouths; their ears shall be deaf. They shall come out of their strongholds. They shall turn in awe to the LORD, and they shall respect you as God’s people. (Micah 7:14)We see the same thing in the Book of Acts - The Christians actually received favour from the people after the Holy Spirit came upon them. The sword does not only bring some opposition, but it also releases grace in us and through us and draws people toward God.Acts 2:47, ESV: And they continued in praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.In one way or another, if we understand the principle of THE SWORD OF GOD’S WORD, we will live with that sword piercing our hearts for our good. If we know we bear that sword it will deepen our life of prayer and we will accept our God given role under God and will find grace, whether we are opposed by people or accepted by them - whether some be offended or whether we find favour. But we say to God ‘‘Be it done unto me according to thy Word’A person who is at peace, at oneness with Jesus, can administer that peace to others.

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HOPE IN HARD TIMES

There is only one thing that we have as human beings that God does not have – Limitations! Suffering is the human experience of our reaction to our limitations – When we can’t have what we want, when we can’t do what we want, when we can’t be what we want to be. Jesus came to live in the midst of our human limitations to resolve all of those problems. He did not come to remove them, but he gives us his unlimited risen self for us to rise above our suffering in the midst of them.

1 Peter 4:12-14. My dear friends, don’t be shocked at circumstances coming your way that test you to the limit. Don’t think of this as being out of the ordinary as far as you’re concerned. You can be glad that you are going through the same sufferings that Jesus went through, so that when his power and glory shines through, you will be elated just to be there. You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.

Peter is telling us to not think of the unexpected as being something unexpected. If our expectation of what should happen to us always came to pass it would mean that we were in command of every one of the thousands of random events and the way that they collide with one another.If we can believe that God is in command of all things, then we can have a proper expectation of him and not of ourselves. We do not become the saviour of our situation, but he does. We see his power and love having sway in our lives by our faith, instead of the erratic and unpredictable circumstances having sway over us, even though they are on display.

Heb 2:8 ‘He put all things in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death now crowned with glory and honour.Jesus is now upholding all things that are happening in your life by the word of his power – If we are ignorant of that then it has no personal meaning. If known and believed in this is cause for an elevated disposition of hope (elation). Your heart and soul become bonded to the hope of Jesus in action rather than the grief and disorder of the world, releasing us to live in and with - the purposes of God.

2 Corinthians 4:16 So we don’t lose heart. Even when our outward life changes for the worse, our inner life continually grows stronger. Our experience of affliction and suffering releases a flow of God’s glory in the midst of everything that happens around us, as we discover the inner life realities of the unseen world. We are not fixed upon the changeable nature of the outward life.

With this understanding we can unconditionally embrace this present moment no matter what the physical or psychological content is. This is how a new pathway of truth is formed in the spirit of the mind, and once we hold on to that pathway of truth, we then choose how to deal with the outer situation. As we learn to live consciously with him, we can ‘lose’ our ‘it’s all about me-self’ and find our ‘true self’ of faith in God. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:25)limitations can now be met and endured with faith and hope and acceptance. We can go with the flow of what is happening, by faith - giving thanks to God in all things (1Thessalonians 5:13) and living in the hope and expectation of what God is doing in the midst of it all. There can also be times when we need to resist something wrong and call it out.God will give us the grace to know the appropriate acceptance or resistance to a situation and the right timing on how and when to do what we need to do. A ‘no’ to what somebody wants from you is just as obedient to God as a ‘yes’ if you know the heart of the matter. Jesus said no to the Pharisees when they wanted to penalize him for healing on the Sabbath, but he said yes to Pontius Pilate when he ordered his execution.

JOB -He deserves a mention here, if we’re talking about hard times.God allowed Job to see that he was in the midst of all the sufferings that Job was going through and that he as God was in control of everything that was happening. God was in control of what Satan could and could not do. God was in control of all creation, and he discusses this with Job. He challenges Job to consider where he himself stood, as a good man, in regard to being fully in charge of his own destiny. ‘What do you know, Job?’

Job 38:4 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? – 12. Have you commanded the morning since your days began, And caused the dawn to know its place? 16 Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.God finishes by asking Job "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him?He who rebukes God, let him answer it." (Job 40:1)

God continues with his revelation to Job of many other wondrous examples of his creation of the Universe and everything in it. This gives Job a new perspective on things, and Job finally answers God.Job 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD and said: "I know that You can do everything,And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, who is this who ignorantly offers advice?' Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. So, listen, please, and let me speak; You said, you would question me, and I would answer You.'‘And I say. I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now mine eye seeth You.

Job was now seeing an unlimited God through the eyes of pure faith. He came to his senses and received hope from God – and he wasn’t even given the inner life of God through Jesus that we are given - to guide us and lead us and become our wisdom. Job wasn’t even under the Old Covenant - He wasn’t even a Jew. This shows how God can intervene in the life of any person at any time and in any age, covenant or no covenant. Our faith tells us that all things are under the feet of Jesus, and even though we still see chaos and disorder around us we see Jesus – within us. We see with eyes of faith. As Job said. ‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.’

God asks us, like he did to Job, to take stock of where we are with our faith - What do we actually believe in and put our hope in. Our minds are continually constructing a pathway of belief that shapes our inner lives with our feelings and emotions and decision making. We are either letting the outward circumstances form these pathways or we allow the inner work of the Holy Spirit lead us into the truth of Christ in us - working in us and for us and through us.Paul said Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? (2Corinhians 13:5)

I’m now continuing with that Scripture we began with that Peter wrote, which ended with ‘You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.Peter then goes on to say towards the end of the passage.19. So if you go through difficult times that you know God has allowed to come upon you, walk on with God and trust him as your creator to faithfully look after the well-being of your soul.

There’s a secret here in this Scripture, a mystery, a hidden treasure as usual, which declares the reality of a life lived with God. It’s the story of the Gospel again - one of its ten thousand reasons - a process of faith as always – putting off the old self and putting on the new self.We lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. We admit we are wrong like Job, so we can be declared right in Jesus. We are strongest when we’re weakest. We can have hope when enduring suffering instead of learning to just get over it or complain about it. Mostly we are taken into God’s purpose with no awareness of it at all. We have no idea what God’s immediate goal may be in certain situations, and as we continue to trust him, his purpose may become even more vague. God’s purpose may appear to have missed the mark that we would have set, because we often see different targets to what he sees. We see things to be done, and we ask for his help to let us do our thing, while he sees a son or a daughter becoming more and more one with him and being in his purpose. If we have a set and determined purpose of our own, it can destroy the simplicity and the calm, relaxed pace which should be characteristic of the child of God that is growing into maturity.So, if we are in oneness with God and recognize that he is taking us into his purposes, then we will no longer become anxious to find out what his purposes are because we trust him to be doing the best there is for us – doing exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.(Ephesians 3:20) - We let him surprise us.As we grow in faith and hope it becomes simpler to us, because we are less inclined to say, “I wonder why God allowed this or that?” And we begin to see that the compelling loving purpose of God lies behind everything in life, and that God is divinely shaping us into oneness with his ways. We can now trust in hope for the knowledge and the wisdom of God, not in our own abilities. When we pursue closeness to God by spending time in his presence, we will see God’s commitment to doing for us what is for our good – it will be revealed to us - in his time, and in his way.

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POWER LOVE AND AN ORDERED MIND

2Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of an ordered mind.

When Paul writes this letter to Timothy, he had been abandoned by many of his associates and is suffering in prison like a criminal for preaching the Gospel- and Timothy is suffering in the church in Ephesus because of the opposition and criticism toward his own ministry. Paul had commissioned Timothy to care for the church in Ephesus, which he himself had founded and established, and he knew well the strengths and weaknesses of that church and he knew the pressures of the opposition that Timothy was under. He encourages Timothy and identifies with him, saying ‘God has not given ‘US’ a spirit of fear’. And in saying ‘US’ he is talking not only about himself but to all of us who also embrace the truth of the Gospel of ‘Christ in us and us in him’ – the Gospel that Paul preached everywhere he went. (Colossians 1:2, Ephesians 3:6-17).

That message of the simplicity of Christ was being opposed then, and is still being opposed today. That Gospel of Christ was the foundation of our society’s tradition and formed its moral and ethical and relational integrity. Over recent generations our western society gradually became indifferent to the Gospel message and in recent times it has become quite hostile. Paul’s counsel to Timothy was not to fear, but to be strong and to trust in the faithfulness of God towards him and in the power of God within him. God is saying the same to us today.In the next verse (verse 8) Paul tells Timothy not to be ashamed of that Gospel, nor of his association with Paul because he was suffering in prison for the Gospel – the power of salvation for all who believe. In this same passage of Scripture he writes.‘which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.’ (2Timothy 1:12)

We are living in times when things have come to a deadlock in many spheres of our global society - in politics, in finances, in education, in relational integrity, in emotional well-being and in the spiritual influence of the Church. There is a power struggle in the heavens and God is moving forward and overcoming darkness, and many of God’s people are moving forward with him in their own lives, but we have yet to see this being manifested in the earth. As God said to Moses and to Israel at the crossing of the Red Sea ‘Stand still and see the salvation of your God’. Israel’s faith then actively moved them forward – by faith they crossed on dry land (Hebrews 11:29) - It is the same with us in these days when we embrace the moving of the Spirit of God within us – we move forward from a place of stillness.

The church in Ephesus had been beset with power struggles because of false teachers that had infiltrated the church and confused the people, and Paul had written to the church in Ephesus warning them of this (Ephesians 4:13). And in this letter to Timothy he warns him of the same thing and tells him to speak against it. He says to him, ‘Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but will want to hear according to their own desires, and because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables (fictional faith fantasies - 2Timothy 4:2).

Paul had looked after the church in Ephesus for three years (Acts 20) during which time there were many signs and wonders done by him. There were also many false signs and wonders done by sorcerers and other false teachers but Paul’s teaching prevailed. Acts 19:16 ‘many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totalled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.

Finally, when he was about to leave the church, he called for the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he encouraged them and he warned them, saying ‘For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace’ (Acts 20:29)In the light of all this, Paul writes to Timothy in Ephesus.

THE SPIRIT OF POWERPaul tells him that God has not given him a spirit of fear but had given him a Spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind. The power of the world that was coming from some people in Ephesus was human power ‘over’ people, but the power of God through Timothy was Holy Spirit power ‘for’ people. Jesus said to his disciples ‘you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you’. Receiving the Holy Spirit is an attitude of faith in the working of God toward us an in us and through us.Paul taught Timothy and he teaches us that we won’t know power unless we are extending God’s love - The Kingdom power that always extends itself out from God within us (2Corinthians 5:14 - For the love of Christ controls us). That power is the ability to change something from a lower state of physical or emotional energy to a higher state of Heavenly spiritual energy, where sin is transformed into holiness, anxiety into peace, sorrow to into joy, and fear into love.

THE SPIRIT OF LOVEIt is by experiencing the love of God to us that we can feel empowered. It changes us dramatically, surrendered to his will, as we receive God’s love with trust and thanks to him in whatever situation we find ourselves. We then observe how God dramatically changes the world around us as we come from a place of being united with God’s mind and heart of love and mercy, rather than acting from a place of judgement and vengeance. The Scripture describes this place of faith like this - children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world as you hold forth the Word of life. (Philippian 2:15). Here are some extracts from Lamentations 3:17-58 where Jeremiah the suffering prophet laments about giving Gods word to Israel and almost giving up as he thought it was going nowhere - but then he remembered Gods loyal love.

I've forgotten what the good life is like. I said to myself, "This is it. I'm finished. God is a lost cause." I'll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I've swallowed. I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—the feeling of hitting the bottom.

But there's one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope: God's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great is your faithfulness! I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left.

God proves to be good to the one who passionately waits, to the one who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It's a good thing to stick it out through the hard times. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst.

Why? Because the Master won't ever walk out and fail to return. If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense. He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way: Lord, you came close when I called out. You said, 'It's going to be all right.' you brought me back alive! God, you saw the wrongs heaped on me.’ You took my side, Master.

THE SPIRIT OF AN ORDERED MINDPaul teaches us that the mind is the battleground of darkness where Satan causes people’s thinking to get entangled with anxious emotional reactions and wrong perceptions. Then they get stuck and are unable to move forward because a disordered mind with reactive perceptions of situations obstructs heaven’s power. But Paul had taught Timothy the truth of the Holy Spirit being at work in our lives to change us by reordering the spirit of our minds.

2Corinthians 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of human power but have divine power to destroy strongholds, casting down imaginations (wrong perceptions).

By acknowledging habits of emotional reactivity and surrendering the reactive perceptions of our imagination to God we destroy strongholds in the mind of wrong pathways of thought, and we rise up into the new life of an ordered mind - into a new pathway of freedom. We build that highway of the mind of Christ in our own minds and release the power of love from our hearts of faith – and that saves and heals the souls in the lives of the people in our world. Amen.

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RISE AND FALLLuke 2:34 This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many – Simeon the prophet…After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated. This time for dedication and purification was forty days after the birth of a child according to Jewish Law. A man named Simeon was also in the Temple at the time and The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King. Holy Spirit had prompted him to go to the Temple that day to answer Simeon’s lifelong prayer of faithfully waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, Simeon realised that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them. He took the child in his arms and began praising God.‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)Joseph and Mary just stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus.

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East. Babylon was the first civilization in the East to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets as far back as 700 BC. Planets in those times were also referred to as stars and sometimes as wandering stars. There were many such Magi, astrologers and astronomers who served the kings of Babylon. These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, where there was a cross assimilation of both cultures, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel. These Wise Men would have also studied any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. By observing the charts of the heavens and calculating the timing of a convergence of two great planets shining as a bright star they would have tracked that ‘great light’ that shone at the birth of Jesus.

They followed this great light to the region of the special birth and arrived at Jerusalem and asked people about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts, but their presence in the city and the questions they were asking the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he worked with the proconsuls and the military leadership in the region around Jerusalem. He had become agitated and threatened by the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he had heard that Israel had a record in their Scriptures of such an event heralding the birth of a Messiah or a new king to rule over them. It was rumoured that this special child would begin a new kingdom in the earth. He did not quite know what this meant, but he didn’t want that sort of competition because he had his own dynasty to create.

He urgently called for the Jewish priests and leaders and pressed them concerning the predicted time and place of this special birth. Certain scribes and teachers knew from the words of the prophet Micah in the Scriptures about the region of the child’s birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and that a great star would appear at that time. Armed with this knowledge Herod secretly summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them the whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king, but all he wanted to know was where to send his garrison of soldiers so that the child could be killed.

After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and they were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child, they went down on their knees and worshipped him and presented him with special and peculiar gifts which have a spiritual message for us today about the life that Jesus lived for us and gave for us in his time on the earth.There was the gift of gold, which speaks to us of the nature of God on display in the life of Jesus that would also be at work in those who believe in his life living within them.There was frankincense which speaks to us of sweet prayer ascending from our hearts. There was myrrh which speaks to us of the suffering of Jesus, and how we share in that suffering in our lives, knowing that without that there is no spiritual growth.

That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him, so Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night.

Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). Joseph then learned that the son of Herod, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, and he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe, so they came and settled in a city called Nazareth. And yet another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family for many years, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult. The Bible tells us of the growth of the life of Jesus into wisdom and maturity and grace.Luke 2:51 Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.These three qualities and characteristics of the life of Jesus marked the way of life that shaped his pathway forward in life. They are imparted to us as virtues to be honoured and believed in and taken up, by our faith in his life, that dwells within us.Wisdom is not just knowledge, but it is the way that harmonises knowledge and good intention to serve the highest good for the most people. Stature is the nobility of character that is formed by consistent acts of wisdom.Favour is the acceptance and approval that comes forth to meet the one of wisdom and stature and give them passage or right of way. It is the gift of grace.

There was a further prophecy that Simeon spoke over Jesus at the time of his circumcision in the temple, that we spoke about at the beginning.‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. This prophecy declares Jesus as being the one whose life is a sign and a symbol of the way of life and truth for each one of us to follow. This way of life will reveal the thoughts and intentions of each of our hearts as being those that either receive and follow that way of life or they that oppose and reject it. For the one whose heart receives and follows in the ways of wisdom and stature and favour (grace) – their life will rise into unity with God. For the one whose heart opposes and denies those ways - their life falls into alienation from the life of God. (Ephesians 4:17)Our past is usually a mixture of rises and falls - but God wants us to be people that rise up into his likeness instead of falling into a downward spiral of wrong behaviour or bad habits – the non-virtue that damages our soul. There is a way of faith that can get us from the downward spiral of non-virtue into the upward rise of virtue.

As far as our brain is concerned there is actually a neurological process that allows the formation of a bad habit – a non-virtue, to grow a life of its own. Repeating the wrong behaviour habitually forms a neural pathway that forms a tiny cellular arrangement of cells that seats itself at a junction deep down in the brain. Over time that place becomes a ‘go to’ place where that experience and sensation automatically fires up dopamine motivation and reward processes which starts a harmful behaviour spiral down to hitting rock bottom, with the consequences of causing harm to ourselves and/or others. Ephesians 4:22 put off your old self, which belongs to your former bad behaviour (anastrophe- drawing you down) and is corrupt through deceitful desires (delusional longings), and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true virtue and holiness.But when we make the promises to ourselves to cease that harmful behaviour and its consequences, we find that the pathways are formed, and the habit space has become a spiritual stronghold waiting at the junction. It waits to hijack anything that wants to take our new anti-bad habit idea to the frontal lobes of our brain where our brain is created to make wise decisions. But that bad habit space is there to stay, and that is where we need faith. The Holy Spirit helps us to be aware of that behaviour and to bring it to the Lord for his grace to overcome it. The work of our faith is to create a more fulfilling virtue space, created in the likeness of Jesus, and it is at this point where we draw from the life of Jesus within us by our faith. We put off the old and get renewed in the spirit of our mind and put on the new which is created in true holiness in the image of God. We can get used to running down the bunny trails of bad habits but God says 'no’ I'm going to let you have a highway of holiness and I'm going to be with you as you create that - and as you come to me new pathways will be formed.

Through what Jesus accomplished in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he experienced with his Heavenly Father – He was building a highway which would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family, in wisdom and stature and favour (grace) with God and man. Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life – His life sacrificed - then risen to life again - then sent into humanity through the Holy Spirit. This had never happened before, this new form of life - God and man together - a new creation. And because of this new creation a new flow of life between man and God can occur, whereby God transforms us and gives us grace for our hearts to be subdued into desiring his will above our own. The Scriptures speak forcefully of this transforming power.Philippians 1:6 Be confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;Philippians 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good will.Philippians 3:21 He will transform our lesser body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.By coming before The lord in quietness and confidence with a faith filled heart and being present with him, his grace acts upon us by the Holy Spirit to transform us into his likeness - body, soul and spirit. In the body by those new pathways being formed in the neurophysiology in our brain, in the soul because our surrendered will is subdued by his will, and in the spirit because we are one spirit with him – We rise above the values of this world into those of his Kingdom above. Amen.

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KING OF PEACE

In the days after the birth of John the Baptist, Caesar Augustus, who was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, decided to do a census and register every person in the known world. Caesar Augustus was the emperor who established the Pax Romanus, the Peace of Rome, a two-hundred-year era of worldly political peace under the rulership of Rome, which allowed the gospel to spread into the whole world, as the empire of Rome comprised over twenty percent of the population of the known world at that time. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. The Scriptures had prophesied that the true King of Peace would be born in Bethlehem at that very time, in a small village nearly five thousand miles distance from the palace of Caesar Augustus in Rome.

Micah 5:2. But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,from you shall come forth for me One who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has given birth to a Son; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel.And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be our peace. Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven-hundred-year-old prophesy of his birthplace, and becoming the King of Peace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary, and the journey was tiresome for Mary, and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season. They did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place near where the animals slept and fed. He saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could. A mother sweated through her mother pain and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father. Loving mother hands washed the newborn child in a water trough. On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” Their singing of this new creation was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation – ‘When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4,7,8).When the singing had stopped, and the angels had left they were guided to the place where this extraordinary and singular event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. This is how we get to ‘know God’. Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. 1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true.This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God, that we need in any given situation and at any given time. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith.Christmas waits to be truly celebrated. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

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MESSENGER AND MESSAGE

Even before the fall of Adam and Eve Father God had always planned that a new species was to be born into the earth one day. He had planned for his Son to begin this new species, a Spirit species – God and man. God would set up a Divine force-field where immortality joined mortality for all of humanity for all time. Now was the time for Jesus to go to earth as The Father’s Son, to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its lost hope, and its sorrow, and to lift human life into a place of oneness with ‘The Three in One’. Jesus as the Son of the Father knew before the beginning of time that this was to be. He knew that it was the only way for the love of God to be known by humanity. Jesus knew that he would become the expression of that love in the most perfect way.

Age upon age had passed in what we call time, and finally the appointed time came to heal the earth. It was broken and bleeding, twisted and torn, and it could not help itself. Lucifer had planted suspicion and hostility into mankind’s mind about God, and humanity had become comfortable with keeping God at a distance, with people believing that perhaps God was watching them, and waiting to judge them. This is the sad state that religion can come to, people trying to appease and manipulate what they see as a distant God who is out to punish them. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. Jesus, as God and as man was to make his transition from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from pure Spirit existence to human flesh existence.

Holy Spirit was to become a partner with Jesus in the completion of this glorious plan. It was not just Jesus God who would inhabit the earth, but Holy Spirit would also become a person of this planet by sharing every moment of life with Jesus, and in that way, he too would experience human life. After Jesus had finished his mission on earth Holy Spirit would become the expression of God’s love to all of humanity. For the rest of time, he was to wrestle within the pain and confusion of human life to reveal God’s love to people and to bring them into oneness with The Three in One.Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and he had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of their love and goodness and truth. He sent an angel to announce this amazing news to Mary.Gabriel entered the place where Mary lived, and startled and afraid she stared at the heavenly being. Gabriel told Mary that she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God the Son' and that she was to call him Jesus. She answered back that it was impossible and that she never been with a man. Gabriel told her that the birth of this Child would not have anything to do with Joseph, her betrothed, and that The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin. He told her that this was the will of Father God, and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, for her to be the mother of this special child who would be the liberator of all mankind. Mary humbly surrendered her entire being to the magnificent will of God. Mary’s response to God through the Angel was ‘let it be done unto to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38).

When Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they were married, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph was a caring and just man and did not want to put her to shame, so he decided to divorce her quietly. But as he was considering how to go about these things the angel Gabriel appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”(Matthew 1:21) All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Isaiah: A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’.When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he married Mary but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Soon after the angel’s visit Mary then made a two-hundred-kilometre journey to be with her cousin Elizabeth in Hebron. Elizabeth was an elderly woman and she and her husband, Zacharias, had never been able to have children, but now Elizabeth is pregnant as God had worked a miracle so they could conceive. Their child would grow up to be John the Baptist, the person whose role in life was to prepare the world for Jesus, and tradition holds that Jesus was born about six months after John.The Christmas story of the miracle birth of Jesus includes the story of the miracle birth of his cousin, John the Baptist, whose father, Zacharias was a priest of the High Priestly line of Aaron, so John was of the same priestly line being the firstborn son of a priest (and a prophet). The angel Gabriel had earlier been sent by God to Zacharias while he was ministering to the Lord before the people in the temple, and burning incense upon the altar. Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him, but the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:13)And Zecharias said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” The angel said “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

When Mary finally arrived at the home of Elizabeth, she was warmly greeted by her, and Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “Blessed are You by God above all other women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1:42-45). Mary then praised the Lord in prayer. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked on the lowly worth of his servant, and behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of lowly worth (Luke 1:46). Mary remained with Elizaberth about three months and returned to her home.

When Elizabeth’s baby boy was born the word spread quickly to her neighbours and relatives, and everyone rejoiced, and when the baby was eight days old they all came for the circumcision ceremony. They all assumed the baby’s name would be Zacharias, after his father, but Elizabeth said that he must be named John, and everyone was surprised because no one in the family was called by that name. So, they asked Zacharias, talking to him by gestures because he had been struck dumb by the angel Gabriel.

Unbelief had taken away the voice of God from the temple priest, Zacharias until John came into the world. That time of silence is a prophetic summary of the voiceless time that God’s people were experiencing in that day. They were in a time and place of silence and darkness, having been without a prophetic voice for four hundred years, and the world shared that silence. That silence would soon be over.In these days in which we live, God’s people, and the world, are in a similar situation of uncertainty and disruption. We are living in a time when there is great darkness and disorder in the world. There are many opinions and many noisy words of judgement and contention being spoken in the secular world while a stark scarceness of wisdom and leadership exists at many levels. Many in the Church also prayerfully wait for the silence to be over, to hear a clear voice from God to the Church, so that there can be a clear Word from the Church to the world. Within that faithful waiting in many hearts there is also a stirring that the Holy Spirit is doing a work of preparing a people of faith who will awaken others to turn their hearts to the Lord their God. Just as the angel said to Zacharias ‘And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.’ (Luke 1:17)

Zacharias motioned for a piece of paper and to everyone’s surprise wrote that the boy’s name was to be John, and instantly he could speak again, and he began praising God. The silence was over.Then Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy to his son John:“And you, my little son, shall be called the prophet of the glorious God, for you will prepare the way for the Messiah. You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. All this will be because of the tender mercy of our God`, and heaven’s dawn is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, and to guide us to the path of peace.”When the silence ceased it did not mean that loud voices would be heard, but a clear voice and so will it be for us in these days ahead. The dove of the Holy Spirit will not clamour but will bring a clarity concerning the love of God for us all. The clear voice will not only come from dedicated church leaders but in some ways even more so, it will come from the soft and faithful hearts of God’s people who love God and one another. They will speak words of love and care and they will release acts of kindness into their world around them. This will allow that light to dawn upon a dark world that can be guided into a path of peace.

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FOOD THAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT

Jesus had been sitting beside a well talking to a very preoccupied, unhappy and unfulfilled Samaritan woman about giving her the living water of the Holy Spirit, and the words he spoke to her changed her life forever. His disciples had become hungry and had gone into the township to get something for them all to eat. They returned with some food for Jesus and offered it to him.John 4:31. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Jesus didn’t say ‘My duty is to do the will of him who sent me’. He said that doing the will of the Father was the energy that sustained and strengthened him. Jesus carried enormous burdens of responsibility to do his Father’s loving will for other people. He also had to absorb the discouraging activity of other peoples’ negative attitudes and resistance towards him and his teaching, and he needed more than just willpower to give him the energy to fulfill these demands.

How strange that the doing of his Father’s will was what both took his energy and what gave him energy. It had to belong to a different energy system that we usually operate from. He said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Jesus knew full well about that food, and he lived within the energy that it gave him. It was spiritual food. It was supernatural food. It came from the heart of the Father. It was the Father’s love for him.

The way it worked was that Jesus felt energized and supported by the same energy that created the Universe. That energy never runs out. It is a loop system that feeds itself because it is eternal, not natural, even though, to Jesus it would have seemed natural, because of the perfect love that existed between himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit. This was the ‘Christ energy food’ that humanity had never known before Jesus arrived on the earth. This was the energy food of God’s love that allowed Jesus to bear the burdens of a suffering humanity.

Paul knew this source of ‘Christ energy’ to serve others and he writes to us about it.Galatians 6:2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Paul tells us that this is what compelled and motivated his own faithful service in the Lord to the people he was sent to serve, and that includes ourselves who read and receive his inspired Word of Scripture to us.2Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we now see things this way: that if One died for all, then all have died; and He died for all, that those who now live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.We need the provision of this spiritual food that nourishes our hearts and souls, as we share in the supernatural work of the doing of God’s good will to others. The powerful energy of God’s love through us to others feeds and strengthens our souls and even our bodies as well. This powerful energy of God’s love lifts the burdens of suffering and shame and guilt from other people in our world of relationship and involvement however large or small that world is. This is not like normal food or fast food – It is everlasting food.

Jesus had been talking to the Jews who were crowding around him and his disciples, listening to him teach. He said to themJohn 6:27 ‘Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you’ Some in the crowd argued that Moses gave their forefathers manna, the bread from Heaven they ate in the wilderness. Jesus then said to them Moses did not give the bread from Heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus crowned this by saying If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my body (my flesh - sarx), which I shall give for the life of the world (vs.51).His message was that the manna from Heaven that their forefathers ate didn’t last, but if they partook of him spiritually as their bread of life, they would experience everlasting life. Then later in this conversation Jesus finished by saying ‘The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort (the flesh) accomplishes nothing. And the words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’ (vs.63).

We can receive that ‘Christ energy food’ of God’s love that energises us to bear not only the burdens that we have to carry for ourselves, but also the burdens that we carry for others, in the same way that Jesus received and lived in the everlasting love of the Father.Jesus plainly tells us that The Spirit alone gives everlasting life. Human effort accomplishes nothing, so, doing the will of the Father in completing his work of loving service to others is not an effort of the human will alone.

But when we desire to do the will of the Father, we have to engage our will somewhere and to choose to faithfully do his will as best we can. We become faithful in putting natural things in order then he gives us authority in bringing spiritual things into order – his Kingdom order. We go from faith to faith in a faith that is working by love. It is God’s will we are seeking, and it is God’s love that we are seeking to reveal, no matter how incompletely we yet see this being accomplished.The secret of Jesus was that he lived fully in the love of the Father. Jesus completed the Father’s love to him first, by his loving gratitude for that love, then he revealed the Father’s love to those he faithfully served that were around him in his world of relationship and involvement‘Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength - and then your neighbour as yourself’.

The Holy Spirit wants to help us to live in that same love that the Father had for Jesus and also has for us. Through the grace of Jesus, we can first purposefully respond to the Father’s love for us in an act of worshipful thanksgiving. We come into his presence and receive his love, and in quietness and confidence we find our strength in that bread of his loving presence. We come to partake of a food that we did not know, the bread of life. Jesus is the gift of love to us from the Father.

We can arrange that communion with the Father purposely but doing the good will of God for others is something we may not always be able to arrange (other than in prayer – and that becomes the most powerful way of praying – by releasing the Father’s love and goodwill to all those in our world of relationship and involvement.).The opportunity of bearing the burdens of others often tends to land on your doorstep unexpected. How many interruptions did you encounter last week that may have actually been opportunities to eat the bread of life and be nourished and strengthened, but we so often don’t see it at the time. Jesus can often seem like an interruption to our day, but He comes disguised as our everyday up and down life, waiting for us to respond to His heart of goodwill for other people.

Jesus was ready to give words of life to that unhappy and unfulfilled woman by the well and see her life transformed. He was always ready because he had a food that his disciples did not know about. That food is ready for us to live on. It is the energy ready for us to live in. It is the constant unchanging energy of his love towards us that created all things, and that reorders all things according to his will, which he invites us to complete for him and with him wherever we are and wherever we go. His love is there as the reason that you are there.

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BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS The world is mostly preoccupied with bad news more than good news in its media expression and general conversation. That is why we have been given a Gospel of good news and it would be unwise to allow the preaching emphasis of that Gospel to be more on the bad news than on the good news. Paul writes to the Corinthian church about this in his letter concerning the ministry of death and the ministry of life.

2Corinthians 3:6 God has equipped us to be ministers of the New Covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life. The ministry of the law written on stone that brought condemnation and death and separation from God, came with a short-lived glory (reflecting the nature of God’s righteousness and wisdom). The face of Moses shone, and Israel veiled their eyes and turned away… Will not the ministry of the Spirit have a much greater glory? So we can put our hope in this and speak clearly and confidently. For if the temporary order of things (the Law), had its glory much more will the eternal order have its glory (the Holy Spirit putting God on display in our lives). for even today when Israel reads the Old Covenant Law the same veil of turning away remains; But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free. So we, with an unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord as a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory through the Spirit of the Lord.

The teaching of the law and Commandments had a measure of glory because it put the nature of God on display (in his righteousness and wisdom). It still does this, and if people do their best in their own strength to obey the Commandments, they will live a more ordered and godly life, but it will not be the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. When I did the podcast series on the Ten Commandments, I explained at the beginning of each session that the way I was presenting the teaching was to emphasise the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant application of each Commandment, and that this transformation of our lives was not just from bad to good but from natural to spiritual.

The teaching of the Law was for the purpose of showing people what sin was - sin towards God and sin towards one another (Galatians 3:19) and all the sins outlined in the Ten Commandments were sins against relationships. The first four were about not trusting God and not loving him and the last six were about not loving one another. The Bible says that loving God and one another is the fulfilment of the Commandments (Romans 13:10).

I grew up as a Catholic and was taught the Ten Commandments and all about sin and punishment and about obedience to the church commandments also, with obligations of attending church, receiving communion, going to confession, and doing penance for sins, and fasting and giving, and other sacramental rites. This helped to form my conscience and to cultivate a tender heart towards God, but I always felt guilt and shame and wondered how I would become a better person. I felt loved and secure and did my best about some of the legalistic bad news – until at about nineteen years of age I took a break from it all and went my own way. Some years after that I married a committed Protestant girl and began to search anew for God, and we had many discussions over Christian doctrine. Some time later she bought me a Bible and by the grace of God while reading that Bible in the middle of the night I found Jesus and then I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Everything began to change and so did I. And I had a clear understanding of the difference between the works of faith and the dead works of doing religion in our own strength. I also realised that the works of faith and of dead works was everywhere, in every church of every denomination, and that the Bible had a lot to say about it. I still respect the Catholic Church and every other church that teaches the forgiveness of sins through Jesus and the love of the Father and the grace of the Holy Spirit. I pray that we will all receive even greater revelation of all these truths.

I find that the hardest thing to grapple with is the teaching of a God that is ‘more angry than loving’. There is a teaching that proclaims that Jesus died for our sins to appease an angry God who was angry with all of us because of our sins and that his anger had to be taken out on Jesus who faithfully took that anger and punishment for us and so changed the Father’s heart towards us. This is called the doctrine of penal substitution (penalty substitution).

No, I believe that the Father so loved the world that he sent his Son to die for us, not to change the Heart of the Father but to change the heart of humanity, by giving them a new heart and a new spirit through the New Covenant and the Holy Spirit. In fact, if Jesus died on the cross to change the heart of an angry God, then it didn’t work, because God is still angry. He is still angry about the destruction that sin does to the human soul of his beloved humanity that he made in his image, and he is still angry at Satan for his dark heart of malice that holds sway over the human heart.

That anger is called the wrath of God (orge – intense feeling of indignation) which didn’t disappear when Jesus died for our sins on the cross. It is the loving unyielding defence he expresses for his human family in correcting the harmful acts of unlove (sin) that we commit towards one another. This act of his intense love is nested in justice and truth as well as in mercy and forgiveness. (Romans 1:18) Today God is allowing many areas of injustice and the suppression of truth to be uncovered (apocolypto) and to come under his hand of his discipline in a world of abounding suspicion and blame and resentment. God counters all of that negative activity with a Gospel of hope and an abundance of grace where God is always within reach and peace can flourish in our inner lives.

God hates the bad news of what sin does to people so he has good news about what forgiveness and reconciliation does for people. That is why there has to be a Gospel of good news for those who do harm and for the poor people who get harmed. The good news is that there is forgiveness, and the further good news is that there is the gift of the life of Jesus within. He gives us a new spirit - he gives us his Spirit and he gives us a new heart.

People need to be told they are forgiven, and that they need no longer be separated from God because of the feelings of guilt and shame about their sinful behaviour, which makes them hide from God and cover up in front of each other. They can receive a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance. The new mindset acknowledges that God is not at odds with them, and they no longer need to be at odds with him. They are reconciled and can acknowledge with relief their sinful nature and be forgiven and transformed. They cannot have everything that they want, but they can receive every good thing that God wants for them. They are now able to have God’s peace. They are now able to trust God. They can now know what it means to be saved. And they also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation (the healing of the soul).

Jonathan Edwards was a profoundly spiritual man of puritan and reformed theology who preached powerfully and sincerely about the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin. In 1733 -1735 there was revival in his church in Northampton Massachusetts USA where there were 30 people being saved each week and it is reported that in six months, nearly 300 of 1100 youths in Northampton were admitted to the church. It was credited as being the beginning of a spiritual awakening that led to becoming the Great Awakening under George Whitefield in 1740. His influence of puritanism and Calvinism shaped the character of American Protestantism for many years, and it still has sway in its expression in modern evangelicalism.

The following is an excerpt of Jonathan Edward’s preaching from ‘Sinners in the hands of an Angry God’.

‘The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow for one moment from being made drunk with your blood.’ And why should God be obliged to express such wonderful love to you, who never exercised the least degree of love to him in all your life? You never have loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligation to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper? You have no benevolence in your heart towards God; you never rejoiced in God's happiness; And why then should God be looked upon as obliged to take so much care for your happiness, as to do such great things for it, as he doth for those that are saved? You care not what becomes of God's glory; you are not distressed how much soever his honour seems to suffer in the world: and why should God care anymore for your welfare? Has it not been so, that if you could but promote your private interest, and gratify your own lusts, you cared not how much the glory of God suffered? And why may not God advance his own glory in the ruin of your welfare, not caring how much your interest suffers by it? And why then is it harsh that God doth not do such great things for you as the changing of your nature, raising you from spiritual death to life or conquering the powers of darkness for you…

The odd thing is that even if the Gospel is preached badly and tells more bad news than good news the Holy Spirit will honour the hearts of his children who call upon his name even out of guilt and shame and not out of the gratitude and joy of forgiveness, as long as the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin is sincerely proclaimed. The work of the Gospel in the hearts of people is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit of grace.

This narrative has affected the mind and heart of the Western Church as well as people in Western Society who have stopped going to church and don’t want to hear about God. What and who we are told we are by God, (or someone speaking in his name) is what we take upon ourselves and has a profound effect on our souls, and if we can’t face that narrative, we escape from its punishing thought somehow. Today’s Western World might refer to God with the idea of ‘God at a distance’ but it is a world proud of its individualism and independence and is convinced that we can work life out by ourselves without God. The sad consequence is a crowded humanity swimming in a high tide of isolation and loneliness and with a suffering soul. Christians often incorrectly manage their own guilt and shame by declaring judgment upon the world for all its wickedness.

In contrast is the spiritual understanding of Athanasius who wrote circa 350 AD. Athanasius was an Egyptian Coptic Christian Theologian and a Church Father and was the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism (Jesus was not God and there was no Trinity).

‘It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by him should be brought to nothing by the deceit wrought upon man by the devil, and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As then the creatures whom He had created reasonable like the Word were in fact perishing and such noble works were on their way to ruin, what then was God, being good, to do? Was he to let corruption and death have their way with them – and in that case what would be the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than have been created to be neglected and perish. And besides that, such indifference to the ruin of his own work before his own eyes would argue not goodness in God, but limitation, and that far more than if he had never created man at all. It was impossible therefore that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself…’ He writes further, Thus, taking a body like our own because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us so that in his death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because having fulfilled in his body that for which he was appointed, death was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did that he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

That is why God’s wrath passionately says ‘No’ to the plunging of mankind forever into a mindset of separation from God and stuck with a heart and conscience of guilt and shame. Only his Son Jesus could sinlessly plunge himself into all that sinful humanity and bend back the separated mindset of Adam with its independence and guilt and shame. And by dying sinless for us as sinful humanity and rising again for us as glorified humanity he could join our lives to his in oneness of Spirit where we can live a life of knowing we are loved by him and able to love him back and be transformed. That is not penal substitution (punishment substitution) based on the so-called justice of an angry God but is the way for us to find new life in oneness with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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WAKEUP CALL

There are two parables describing marriage feasts in the gospel of Matthew and they are about the Kingdom of Heaven and of God’s relationship to his Church, and they both give us a picture of the end time return of Jesus to be joined to his bride. In Matthew there is the parable of the King arranging a wedding for his son. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come (Matthew 22:2) Here the attention is upon the guests who were invited and their various reasons for not attending, which dishonoured the King, but there is nothing mentioned here about the bride or the bridesmaids. In this story the King finally sends his servants out into the highways and byways to compel people to come to the feast because he wants the celebration to be well attended.

The parable of the wise and the foolish bridesmaids is in Matthew chapter 25 and is more focussed upon the bride and the bridegroom and the bridesmaids. The bridegroom is Jesus, and the bride is the church, and the attention is upon the readiness of those who have roles to perform in their attendance at the marriage feast, such as the bridesmaids.

Today we will look mainly at the parable of wise and foolish bridesmaids, which starts off by saying. ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros –neglectful, unmindful [moron]), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). (Matthew 25:1)

The background to these parables is the Jewish marriage customs in Bible times, and they give us an insight into the order of certain arrangements such as who sends out the invitations and to whom are invitations sent and the question of who determines what the wedding date shall be. There are various obligations and expectations and if these are not observed properly then a person’s honour could be at stake The usual arrangement was that both families would arrange for a young couple to become betrothed for about a year and then work together on the future plans and financial arrangements for all parties involved. When the marriage occurred around a year later the bridegroom and the bride would not organise their own future household arrangements as the bride would join the bridegroom’s family household after the marriage. After the initial betrothal the bridegroom would live in his father’s house, and he would prepare a bridal chamber like an add-on apartment for he and his bride to live in for some time into the future.

There was some flexibility regarding the time for the bridegroom to prepare this new place for he and his bride so there was no definite wedding date and when the place was complete, the groom would come to get his bride and bring her home for the wedding and the wedding feast. The bride would not know the day or hour of her husband-to-be’s return, and the groom’s arrival was usually suddenly announced with a trumpet call and a shout, so the bride at least had some forewarning. The bride would take part in a ritual cleansing and then came the smaller family ceremony which was attended by a select few. Then after the family ceremony the couple would attend a more lavish wedding feast celebrated in their honour which included a much larger crowd. The servants of the bridegroom’s father were sent out to invite the guests to the larger wedding feast celebration. This is why the parables concerning wedding feasts always involve some confusion over the guests often being caught having to put off other arrangements in order to honour the host of the wedding feast, and this was a test for the guests and their order of priorities and loyalties as they often had other matters of importance or self-interest to attend to. The uncertainty of the timing of the event all depended upon how long it took the bridegroom to prepare a place for his bride (no one knew the day or the hour) and the smoothness of the process of the wedding and the feast depended upon how ready everybody was when the bridegroom announced that he was ready. Some were extremely mindful of all these proceedings while others were unmindful or indifferent. The main point of these stories is; who was mindful and who was unmindful during the delay.

Matthew 25:1 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros – heedless, neglectful, unmindful), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready (hetoimos – prepared oil in lamps) went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

We have said that these parables are about Jesus and the Church, so we must ask the question ‘Is everybody at the wedding feast part of ‘The Church’? The answer is yes, this is clearly the case and that there are very many people who make up the Church that are at different levels of commitment to God. God knows where his Church is somewhere in amongst all those that ‘do Church’ because ‘doing church is not necessarily ‘being Church’. This prompts another question ‘If the Bible says that the bride of Christ is the Church, then what is the difference between the bride and the bridesmaids and the other guests, as aren’t they also the Church? Again, the answer is yes, but there are people also at different levels of intimate relationship with Jesus, and the ‘bride company’ of the Church exists invisibly here and there as ones who would be in the most intimate of relationship with him. The Father is very accepting and merciful to all who believe in his Son and are on their journey of faith and all we can say is that by the grace of God people make their own choices in these relationship priorities. Only God knows the heart of each one and we cannot assume or presume in these matters about where everything is at right now and where they will be one day.

However, we can observe that the Bible describes different categories of people involved in these wedding feast stories. The two most important ones are the bride and the bridegroom, and they only have eyes and minds and feelings for one another, anticipating a life of being together as one forever. This speaks of Jesus coming back for his bride which is part of the Church.

Then we have the bridegroom’s father who is concerned for the honour and fulfillment of his son’s life and future. This speaks of Father God

The bride’s parents are concerned that the bride will be prepared and ready and bring beauty and glory to this very special occasion. This speaks to us of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in preparing us to be his bride.

The interesting thing about the bridesmaids is that is that ‘they all became drowsy and slept because of the bridegroom’s delay’ – That is why I’m calling this word ‘Wakeup Call’. Some were more diligent than others in being ready by having oil in their lamps, which speaks to us of being filled with the Holy Spirit and awake and alive to his activity within. The unmindful bridesmaids had indeed experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives but had been distracted and had neglected the work of the Holy Spirit alive in them and run out of oil. In those times the bridesmaids were chosen knew that they too would without doubt be brides one day. That would be their sure hope and expectation. We could speculate that this progression from bridesmaid to bride is there for every one of us and even if it does not occur within our lifespan, we might consider that in the age to come the Holy Spirit will cause our love to be completed in the Father’s love for us so that we too will be as the bride in perfect oneness with his Son Jesus who will appear to us as the bridegroom 1John 3:2 we are God's children now, and what we shall be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears (phanero??- to know what has been hidden or unknown, to manifest, whether by words, or deeds, or in any other way) we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he is pure.

As for the many other guests mentioned in the first parable the Bible reveals that this was a test for their order of priorities and loyalties in honouring the son’s father. And when we consider how the father’s heart was so determined to fill his house at all costs that he sent the servants to get people from the highways and byways, such as beggars maybe sleeping under bridges.

This prompts another question for further speculation. Could there be people that we know of who have not responded to the gospel for a multitude of reasons and whose hearts maybe have pondered the Mystery of God with doubt or improbability or even the denial of a wounded and painful heart, and whom the Father sees as his children who need more time in an age to come, for their heart response to his love to be completed just as do the bridesmaids? Only God knows. But to join the dots a little more boldly I will add this; The final thing God did when he created the world, on the sixth and final day of his creation was to fashion a bride Eve for his Son Adam. On the seventh day he rested in order to enjoy the fulness of fellowship with his sons and daughters to be. And now for another question. If God’s final work in the final days of this present kingdom age will be to fashion a bride for his Son, what will be the nature of the next Kingdom age that the Scriptures speak about at length concerning a one-thousand-year reign of Christ upon the earth during which time Satan is bound? (Revelation 20:1-6, Timothy 2:11, Romans 16:20, Isaiah 2:2-4, Isaiah 11:6-9, Micah 4:1-3 and many more).

Could this be a time of opportunity for the completion of the love response in the hearts of multitudes of people that perfects their oneness with the bridegroom Jesus? Today I will just have to leave these questions open for your consideration and address them further in the New Year, the Lord willing. Have your questions and comments ready.

In both parables a peculiar thing happens in that some of those invited to the marriage feast have the door closed on them at the last moment. The five unmindful bridesmaids were left outside, and in the other parable a man was put out into outer darkness for not having a wedding garment. There is no explanation given about this outer place in the parable but my speculation concerning this in the reading of other Scriptures in Revelation chapters 11, 12, and 19, is that this outer place could well be a time of trial and tribulation that some in the Church may experience while those at the feast are given safety and refuge in the presence of the Lord during that time.

In every generation that lives upon the earth there is this wake-up call to what we are here for and what we were born for and what the Father’s heart is for his Son and for his Son’s bride and for all who honour and appreciate Gods love for us. It has been a long delay! I also believe that when Jesus does return for his bride and the wedding feast is celebrated that there will be people from down through the ages attending that reunion wedding feast that have been awake and alive to the Father’s heart for this occasion for his Son.

Paul dwelt thoroughly on the relational aspect of Christ and his Bride when he spoke of presenting his bride as having her soul cleansed by his Word and having a heart of inner beauty that is without spot or blemish. Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish

Paul was always urging the church to awaken and to reawaken into a conscious awareness of the nearness of God with us at all times, and not to allow the difficulties and distractions of the world to weary us into a spiritual slumber. Romans 13:11 You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep

Paul saw that the uncertainties of the future and the fatigue of past struggles had allowed a lethargy of spirit to take over peoples’ souls that he had in his care, and he went to great lengths to remind them to live in the present moment and not in the vagaries of time that had been wasted or lost or anxious that time was running out.

He pressed upon them to take hold of the available grace that abounded towards them if only they would trust and believe. Paul saw himself as co-labouring and cooperating with God on their behalf and stirs them to be of a similar disposition of working together with God and for God. He writes, ‘I heard you at the right time and came to give you salvation but be aware that the time is right now for your grace to fully co-operate in this day of salvation’ (2Corinthians 6:1) Act now, Paul urges, for this is the acceptable (and only) time to do so. It is not only having had salvation come to you once and that is all there is to it, but it is time for your salvation to live in you and come out of you from a conscious kingdom life within you. He was saying, God hasn’t stopped labouring but have you stopped co-labouring.

How do we cooperate and co-labour? We occupy the now (and only) moment of grace in his presence which is to us a place of safety and refuge. To do this we need to stop, be still, and engage our mind to focus upon his life actively streaming its goodness towards us. We then trust and fully believe that God is working his Kingdom of heaven life into our earthly lives and circumstances to bring them into the order of his Heavenly life. We trust and believe that God is redeeming and restoring our past experiences of loss and disorder in our lives into a thankful now present place of peace and order. And that gives us new hope as we look forward to an ongoing Kingdom ordered life for the future.

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GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR SPIRIT (1Corinthians 6:20)

John Chapter 13 speaks of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last supper, and through to John Chapter 17 Jesus speaks his final words to his disciples before he and his disciples go out from the Passover Feast into the garden where he is betrayed by Judas and arrested. Between Chapters 13 and 17 Jesus prepares his disciples for the new life of the Kingdom within them that will come after his resurrection. He shares with them of the coming of the Holy Spirit that will abide with them and transform them and lead them into all truth concerning the words he has spoken to them. In Chapter 17 he finishes with his astounding prayer to his Father concerning the glory of God that will be seen through them and through all those that come after them that truly believe in his indwelling presence.

John 17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

This remarkable Scripture tells us that we have been given a share of the glory of God that was given to Jesus. This glory of God is exhibited by our oneness with God and our unity with one another so that the world will know that Jesus was sent into the world by the Father. The glory of God is the outward expression of the awe and wonder of an unseen God who dwells within us as we consciously dwell within him. In this Scripture Jesus is praying that we will see that glory of God at work in our lives. We will see ourselves being present with him where he is in his resurrected human form, and at the same time he is where we are in our day to day circumstances no matter what they are. When we take hold of that fact by our faith, we can go though any trial or tribulation because he is with us in it, comforting, encouraging, strengthening and empowering us.

Paul tells us that our spirit carries the inner glory of God as we acknowledge that we are joined in one spirit to his spirit, and that our bodies are the outward expression of that inner glory. 1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. God does the supernatural work of bringing his will to pass in our inner lives and we make ourselves available for him to express himself in our outer bodily lives in a simple and often very ordinary and unspectacular manner. He does not give us his glory for us to take any outer glory for ourselves, but he can be glorified through us. It is not a matter of our physical appearance or performance. We may be young and energetic or elderly and frail, educated or uneducated, glamourous or plain, rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. All he needs in us is a yielded heart to express the power of the love and wisdom that he wishes to bring about in our world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus did not have a spectacular physical appearance that drew people to him as some kind of celebrity. He was a plain and ordinary looking person. Isaiah 53:2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no stateliness about him and he was not suave or handsome that we should want to stare at him, and he had no appeal that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was shunned, and we did not highly regard him.

Jesus came to embody the nature of the Godhead and to glorify God in his body and not impress the world with any success or celebrity status. John 17:4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Jesus saw the eternal glory that awaited him and he knew that whatever his body looked like or how well it could physically perform it was sufficient to fulfil the will of his Father and glorify him on this earth. Jesus said A body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. (Hebrews 10:5) Jesus knew that his body was there to embody God’s purpose, and that gave everything that happened in his body its true meaning.

Paul understood this reality concerning his own body and that all that mattered to him was who he was in Christ. He knew his body was simply a vessel to express the inner glory of God through him and he held his body together as best he could just for that. 1Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it under control, just in case that after preaching to others, I should end up letting God down. He was very aware of his physical infirmities and ailments and knew he had no glamour to impress the crowd. 2Corinthians 10:10 “For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible. Paul knew that no matter what his physical limitations were that he just had to be there doing his best and letting God do the rest. He also knew that the church people sometimes derisively compared him to other self-appointed apostles and thought of him as a bit of a loser, but he told them he wasn’t going to compete or compare himself with them. His last word on the matter was ‘he who glories, let him glory in the Lord’ For not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commends (vs.18). Paul knew that outward appearances could be deceptive. What looks strong on the outside may be pathetic on the inside and what looks feeble on the outside may be strong and durable on the inside. Living creatures of many species do their best to glamorize the outside in order to look attractive or even tough – puffer fish and peacocks

It was around three hundred years after Paul’s ministry that the Church began to glorify the outward appearance of things in just about every aspect of Christian practice. The early Church prior to that time was not interested in worldly power or influence. There were no genuine apostles or prophets that held celebrity status or lavishly enriched themselves as ministers of the Gospel. But then the Emperor Constantine declared himself as being a Christian and made Christianity the main religion of Rome, and he created Constantinople, which became the most powerful city in the world, and from that point on over the next few centuries Christianity began to take on the status of ‘Christendom’ and in many ways it resembled a worldly Christian kingdom (and still does) and outward power replace inner strength. However, the heart of Christianity has remained alive and well and devoted men and women up to this day give themselves, spirit soul and body, to live their lives to glorify God through Jesus Christ and to bless millions and millions of people.

We may be living in the times when the Holy Spirit is calling people back into the kind of inner focus upon the glory of God that can dwell within us and be expressed through us no matter how impressive or unimpressive weak we may appear on the outside. We may be living in the times when Jesus as head over the Church is calling forth his Bride Company to be ready for him with hearts that respond to his love and wish to spend more time in his presence. We may be living in the times once again when the Father is speaking to us as beloved brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus to express his glory through his Body the Church, the Body of Christ.

Does the Church as the Body of Christ glorify God and reflect the nature of God in love and unity? (John 13:35), and is the Church salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13)? The Church once was all of those things and it can become all of those things once again. The logical way for the corporate expression of God’s glory through his Body in the earth is for those individuals who call themselves Church to personally live in a new way of life in Christ that offers hope for people to live a new kind of human life that is not prey to the vengeful and unforgiving patterns of this world that destroy the human soul.

When Paul wrote to the churches that made up ‘the Church’ he taught them pastorally as individuals with a personal responsibility to reflect the glory of God in their own bodies and that that would translate into a corporate expression of the glory of God in the Body of Christ. In his apostolic capacity he also addressed the Church corporately, not with the business of having political influence but with the same spiritual issues of love and forgiveness and unity. His words to the church in Rome stated this

Romans 12:1 present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (logicos latreia – logical service – the logical way to serve God!), and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…

He taught them of the inner spiritual pathway of spending valuable time with God and in his Word that leads to the finding of the true eternal self. As that true identity of being one in spirit with the Lord begins to take shape in a person’s life they begin to grow in faith in the mercy and grace of God that is freely available to them. Sometimes you see God shining through as they grow in confidence of who they really are in God, and what they really believe concerning his power to reorder and transform a person’s soul. Their bodies have been presented to God as holy and acceptable to him and have become more available to influence and overcome the artificial imaginations and ideologies and hollow power structures that abound in the world immediately around them. That is the only logical way for the corporate expression of the Body of Christ to emerge out of a multitude of singular gleams of light that glorify God in the earth.

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WHAT IS MAN

Hebrews 2:5 What is man that You are mindful of him… or the son of man that You look compassionately upon him? You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.

In this Scripture the word for man is Anthropos which generically includes all humans, not just males, and it is where the word anthropology comes from which is the study of mankind and human societies and their cultural development. God is mindful of Man, humanity, and in fact that word mindful (mnaomai) in the Greek has an emphasis of ‘being a fixture of the mind’. That Scripture also says that ‘man has been created of a lower order that the angels’ because humanity is a spirit being with a body and soul whereas angels are pure spirit beings. Humanity is a ‘fixture of the mind’ of God because we have been made in the image of God to reflect his nature of love and creativity and we have been chosen to be his family of sons and daughters in the earth, but not so for angels.

Everything that God creates has a degree of separation from him because of having a lower order of being than God, but only angels and humanity have a free will and a consciousness of self-identity that can choose to live in loving and grateful obedience to God, or to choose a mindset of independent separation from God. It was an angel of darkness, Lucifer, that tempted mankind to disobey God and from that moment on a state of independent assertion of the human will has been under the sway of that darkness and has acted in favour of its own interest instead of God’s. From the time of Adam through to Jesus every human soul lived with an individual sense of identity their ‘I am’ (Greek=ego), which was their idea of who they were. This idea of who they were depended mostly upon what was reflected back to them by those who had influence over them in their world. They also had a conscience that guided them to do what was deemed to be right or wrong and they had a free will to follow their conscience or to break the rules and take the consequences.

During that time frame between Adam and Jesus, God set aside a nation of people called Israel and he gave them Commandments and a Law of life to guide them in the highest practice of wisdom and knowledge concerning how a person should live before their creator God. This determined their conscience of right and wrong and gave them a sense of identity, of who they were before God and themselves and the world.

That Scripture goes on to say that in time there would come a certain someone called ‘the Son of Man (Anthropos, Mankind, Humanity,)’ whom God would crown with glory and honour and place all things in subjection under his feet - Jesus son of God and Man. In the days before Jesus died on the cross, he began to explain a mystery to his disciples about how they would become one in being with himself and the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. It was difficult for them to understand this mystery and he told them that when the Holy Spirit came (after his resurrection), he would reveal this truth to them.

John 14:19 A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you… These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Jesus was telling them that they would live with a new sense of who they really were, as a new Anthropos, with a new ‘I am’ (ego), being one with God in the Spirit, and drawing life from a new source of being and power, from God himself. Jesus knew he would have to depend upon the Holy Spirit to reveal this individually to each person, but he still said it and assured them that they would remember what he said.

But just to make sure they knew the practical meaning of what he was saying he went on to tell them the parable of the vine and the branches. John 15:4 I am the true vine, Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can't produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me.

Those disciples walked with Jesus and were taught this Kingdom mystery by him through many parables during his ministry and they still found this mystery difficult to understand in their natural minds. But there was another apostle called Paul who did not walk with Jesus during his ministry or hear his parables, and who had to receive this truth of becoming a new creation the way we have to receive it, from a revelation of faith, through the grace of God. Paul’s revelation to us of who we are in Christ is perfect and complete and is waiting, alive and ready for each individual in each new generation of believers to embrace this Gospel of grace and to live it out.

After Jesus died and rose again and the Holy Spirit was sent from Heaven to the earth upon all of Mankind (anthropos – man – humanity) and then everything changed. The apostle Paul was the one who was able to illuminate the words that Jesus had spoken to his Jewish disciples to all the nations, not just Jews.

Paul explained the mystery to all the world that the old ‘I am’ (the ego) of the historical old anthropos (Man) could now receive a new ‘I am’ as a new Man, in Christ. This was the good news that Paul was given from God to tell all the world. He called this the ‘mystery that has been hidden through all the ages - Christ in you the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27) His challenge was to help people understand how to manage a life with the existence of two ‘I ams’ (egos) in the same person, the old anthropos and the new anthropos. Which ego would win the identity contest about who was the real ‘I am’?

Paul spoke of his personal understanding of this when he explained how to live real Christianity to us. it is no longer I (ego) who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I (ego) now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I (ego) do not hold back this work of the Grace of God (Galatians 2:20). The revelation of this reality gives a person an entirely new mindset of who they really are. They are no longer held back by a self-centred ‘I am’ ego which has done its best by trying to be virtuous. They can now adopt the new mindset (repentance) of being one with God and they can live from a new ‘I am’ that is graced with the Spiritual power and love and wisdom of Christ. They need no longer see themselves as being an isolated individual totally dependent upon their own resources and feeling separated from the blessing of a loving God within them.

Paul writes to us about this process when he says. Discard your old anthropos (Mankind, Ego,) and your former way of life, which is corrupted by deception and wrong desires and instead, let the Spirit renew your mind and attitudes. Put on your new anthropos (New ‘I am’) created to be with God and like God—aligned with God and set apart for him. (Ephesians 4:17)

A person who lives this kind of a life of faith will find themselves pausing to stop and reconsider which ‘I am’ they are living out of. Our old ‘I am’ Ego doesn’t want to die. It wants to win the ‘I am’ contest. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to win that struggle within us (John 16:8). He works to renew our mind so that just as we are a fixture of the mind of God – What is Man that you are mindful of him – so we make God a fixture of our mind to live within his life.

Our natural born I am (ego) has been created in the image of God with a uniquely individual personality and a potential for remarkable skills and amazing creativity that can live out of a good conscience and grow in character and integrity. We live with an individual sense of identity which is our idea of who we are, and our natural I am can live a relatively good life and find a personal fulfilment as far as life in this disordered world can afford it. Our natural I am also has the potential to behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that can be harmful to ourselves and those around us, but God knows each heart and will deal justly with each one of us. Our new spiritually born I am is that old natural born ‘I am’ learning live by faith in a surrendered union with the indwelling life of God. It finds a new sense of identity which is based upon God’s perfect idea of who we are in oneness with his life. This new I am can reach the true potential that God sees in us rather than the limited potential of what we strive to imagine.

The Bible says that The Holy Spirit shows us our true ‘I am’ in God’s Word. It is like a mirror so that when I look into it I see what kind of Anthropos ‘I am’. But when I turn away and do not fix my mind upon God, I forget what kind of ‘I am’ I am. James 1:25 But the one who looks into this perfect law of liberty and holds on to what they hear it say to them and lives it and does not forget it will be blessed in everything he does. Let this be the fixture of your mind that your new ‘I am’ is always you and God together in everything you do. Paul tells us to discard the old limited and isolated Anthropos that gets confused by the uncertainties of life in this disordered world and plunge into the new Anthropos and taste Heaven while living on this earth living a reordered life that begins to reorder everything around you.

A person who puts this into practice and who spends generous time in the presence of the Lord while quietly allowing The Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus and the Father to them will find themselves oddly feeling the things that God feels and thinking the things that God is thinking in a subtle but certain way, and hearing the things that God says. They will go through difficult times being comforted by the wonder of a loving God always with them in the pain of this life. They will do the things that God prompts them to do and they will know that everything strangely happens to bring about his perfect will and purpose for them, and they will give thanks.

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MEETING LIFE’S CHALLENGES

‘Meeting life’s Challenges’ is an autobiography of Brooks Wilson’s life that invites us to meet him at four years of age and join his journey of life up until the current time of the writing of this book. We share the days of his early years as the son of Rob Wilson who was born in Mudgee NSW Australia and ‘Peg’ Wilson who was born in Massachusetts USA as Gertrude Brooks, the daughter of Clayton and Grace Brooks. And this Australian/American heritage of Brooks Wilson becomes a central feature of his life, which is grandly enhanced by his marriage in 1959 to Ann Meredith, a journalist from Springfield Ohio USA.

These early years that tell of Brook’s comprehensive education, business training and career achievements are marked by his foundational Christian upbringing which defines his philosophy of life. In the preface to his book he draws from the Apostle Paul’s teaching about loving one another and in his own words he says ‘Life is not all about ‘us’. The key is to forget ‘self’ and reach out to others’. The heartbeat of this philosophy is steady throughout his book.

Brooks’ marriage to Ann, whom Brooks describes as ‘the centre of his life’ not only consolidated the Australian/American heritage but it also opened up a life of travel for Brooks and Ann that took them on a journey of adventure and discovery to many countries and regions and cultures. They had many interests in common, including their shared commitment to Christian values, and their journeys of travel together reflect both their shared appreciation of the cultural diversity and social interaction they experienced, along with a shared sense of purpose and mission of investing their care into the lives of everyone they were to meet, no matter where they were from or what they did for a living.

A striking example of how travel with meaning and purpose planted itself into their relationship leaps out of the book as Brooks describes some travel itineraries from the year of their wedding. If we could see the entry and exit visas on both their passports in one eventful week in 1959 we would see them stamped with New York, London, Switzerland, and back to London, topping it all off with Brooks proposing to Anne while they were flying over Paris at night, and Ann said ‘yes’ (Page 69).

Brooks takes us into his and Ann’s active family life with their children. We get to learn of their splendid achievements, sometimes against the odds, and their growing up and marrying and the arrival of grandchildren who likewise grow up to ‘Meet Life’s Challenges’, again sometimes against the odds. All of that flows into and out of a background of significant recent and present-day events where we meet heart-warmingly regular people and inspiringly noble and notable people such that we are made to feel at home with them on their pages, with the monochrome photos aiding the connection. The author’s style is straightforward and easy to read but as you catch the style you realize how energetically it moves the story along. He employs short, punchy sentences that get the reader into lively dialogue as if we were sitting around the table with himself and a host of other guests.

After the years of preparation in laying the foundation of discipline and study and applying the principles of life that he valued, Brooks Wilson starts to hit his straps and his potential becomes realized in a career of leadership that leads to countless areas of expression. With his home base firmly settled in Australia and maintaining strong ties with the US Brooks begins working in Sydney with a company called Koppers USA and through this company he connects with two businessmen who had been at Harvard Business School where Brooks also studied. Brooks worked with these two men to set up a business arrangement between Koppers USA and BHP Australia, and Koppers Australia Pty Ltd was finally registered as a 50/50 joint venture with BHP. This Australian company was renamed KAP, with Brooks Wilson serving as Marketing manager in Sydney as his first appointment, and in time becoming Managing Director of this very profitable company and creating international trade links with many countries and regions in the Pacific, North America, the Middle East and Asia.

The narrative of the company’s international trade hits a cracking pace in this section of the book as the author describes multiple meetings with heads of State in Australia and the USA and in China, with the China connection providing a good dose of intrigue in times of global headline events. One paragraph that sits modestly amongst the dealings with China describes what is called a ‘Compensation Trade Agreement’ and it reads ‘this was the first venture of any type to be agreed between an Australian and a Chinese company and worked for the mutual benefit of both companies’. Many of these impressive milestone events are backed up by citations in the appendices from various magazine and newspaper articles.

Towards the end of the book in the second last chapter Brooks Wilson rolls the story back into the 1800’s and features legendary family members who have wound their DNA into the personalities of the current generation of Wilsons, which makes this work a true chronicle that any family would treasure. But this book goes beyond the chronicle and legacy of past and present family history. The writing has been coiled to project a decisive challenge of how to face the future to all who read it. This book is not just for the extended Wilson family and their friends, it is a book to be offered to any person of any age who desires to know how to build a vision for their lives, and who would like to know what ingredients of character, and courage and compassion deserve to be taken in hand and given to their world.

Paul O’Sullivan

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/meeting-lifes-challenges-brooks-c-wilson/1142275488

WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS Matthew 6:22

Matthew 13:44 … The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

In the days when this parable was written there were no central banks as we know them today but there were money lenders who kept peoples’ money on low interest and lent money out on high interest. This led to the practice of people burying their money in fields that they owned, in a hidden place, to use when needed, and if anyone happened to be working on that field for whatever reason and found the treasure, he would know that it belonged to someone else and that stealing the money could get him into big trouble. So, if he really valued that treasure, he would have to buy the field and use the treasure perhaps to trade in business or even get some interest from the money lenders.

We see this principle in another parable where a land owner who was travelling to a far land gave different sums of money to his servants and told them to trade it and he would reward them when he returned (Matthew 25:14). They all did well and profited to different degrees and the landowner was pleased with their results, except for one servant who buried the money in the field and did not put it to profitable use and didn’t even put it in the ‘bank’ (from ‘trapeza’ – a four legged table that served as a money exchange counter). The unprofitable servant was punished for his idleness and the unprofitable servant was cast into the outer darkness (vs.30). Outer darkness is the state of the soul that is driven by fear and frustration and emotional turmoil while inner light is the state of the soul that is powered by faith and hope and love. The point is, that it is one thing to have a treasure buried somewhere but it is essential to put that treasure to good use, as we have a responsibility to be productive and to share our productivity with others and not just heap up treasure for ourselves. As far as spiritual treasure is concerned, nothing compares with participation in the outward flow of the Divine life for bringing grace and goodwill into this world. It is also the most fulfilled state of being that a person’s soul can experience. It is sadly odd that most people are not interested in that.

In the parable of the treasure hidden in the field the treasure represents the gift of the life of Jesus hidden within our hearts and our hearts represent the field. We don’t buy the treasure, we buy the field and the field yields the treasure. The Bible says that where our heart is that is where our treasure will be also (Matthew 6:21). We may have allowed the field of our heart over the years to treasure random things that bear no worthwhile comparison to the highest treasure there is of the Divine life within. We need to sell off that old field of our heart that contained all the pursuits that we once thought were treasures and buy the new field.

The miracle of God’s Grace is that a new heart is given to everyone freely by God, simply waiting to be discovered by our faith. Every decision of faith in that new territory of the new heart grows the area of this new territory and as the old heart gives way to the expanding territory of the new heart, we experience a greater and greater appreciation of the new treasure within. Our spiritual journey is one of being aware of having a new heart and letting our faith decisions become the trade-offs of the old worldly values and the negative emotional baggage, for the new life-giving values of the Kingdom of God. The apostle Paul said that he had suffered the loss of all things to gain Jesus. Paul purchased the right field and found his treasure. (Philippians 3:8). Paul also writes about the treasure as being in an earthen vessel, which is our outer life, and no matter how fragile that vessel is, or how formidable are the pressures upon that vessel, the inner treasure is of greater power than the outward pressure. 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are pressured on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don't know why things happen as they do, but we don't give up and quit.

Many people today are getting stuck in a cycle of negative emotional reaction to adverse circumstances in their lives and those emotional reactions come from a negative spiritual energy, but Paul is describing the ‘excellence of the power of the Spirit of God ’ within him which flows from the inner treasure in the heart. The word for ‘excellence’ in the Greek in this verse is ‘hyperbole’ which is the word we use to mean exaggerated or overstated. The Greek word means ‘to be thrown out beyond the normal range’. In other words, Paul experienced a power that was out in another orbit. It operated above the normal energy of willpower or mere emotional determination. He found the power of the indwelling treasure of the life of God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

When we ask ourselves about our outward capability to manage the circumstances and challenges and pressures that come upon us in these days we might well say ‘How do I cope with these difficulties or how this will work out’ – it’s unknown and unpredictable. But each one of us can know that our inner capability to come through these pressures spiritually and emotionally is a spiritual energy that nothing can overcome and that is getting stronger day by day. As Paul says in the same Scripture above concerning the treasure in earthen vessels ‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward self is perishing, yet the inward self is being renewed day by day (vs.16). As all things are being shaken in these days we can see these shakings as God awakening people in the earth at this time to an awareness of the power of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The excellency of this power is of a Kingdom within that cannot be shaken. Can you imagine the futility of us trying to make things change in our world and not allowing things to change in ourselves first? That has never worked.

If all that we have as a mindset is the pain of the adversity of today, we will think of life as being all about what we don’t have and what we are not, instead of the inner treasure that is about what we do have and about who we truly are in God. Whatever that mindset is becomes the spiritual energy that radiates out from us that manifests who we are and manifests the inner grace that we have to everyone around us. We have to sell off that ‘don’t have’ and ‘am not’ for what we actually ‘do have’ and who we really are, now, and allow the ‘excellence of the power of God’, that real inner state of who we are be found in us. It is a spiritual energy exchange. We can experience the peace and rest of that beautiful field and the treasure it contains.

‘He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.’ (Psalm 23)

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THE CHURCH AND DISPUTES WITH THE WORLD It is understandable that the world will have reason to dispute with Christianity in general and with the Church in particular because the belief system of the Church is based upon a spiritual reality that is not understood by the material and non-spiritual rationality of the world. If you talk to a person of the world, you will not expect them to believe that God in Christ created the universe, and that Jesus was raised from the dead and is now Lord over the Universe and Lord over our lives.

Christians understand the material and non-spiritual rationality of the world, but they also understand a transcendent reality that comes from the revelation of God to our spirit so the Church does not have to be engaged in disputes with the world because Christians can engage in good will discussion within both kinds of realty. They can have healthy debates with all people and agree to disagree with each other on all kinds of day-to-day issues that depend solely upon observation rather than revelation from God.

A Christian can live effectively in the world of material rationalism and be successful and productive and operate with a motivation of God’s love to bless everybody in that world that God loves creating no basis for antagonism. A Christian can let that love be on display knowing that it is only the Grace of God that changes the basis of reality for an individual from the natural realm into the spiritual.

1Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges (to discern, examine, determine if right or wrong) all things, yet he himself is not correctly discerned by the world.

When Jesus said his Kingdom was not of this world (John 18) he was making a distinction between the spirit of the world and the Spirit of the Kingdom of God. He was sending his disciples into the world to serve and to save and to heal the disordered soul of humanity, and when he saw his disciples wanting to judge the world for their sins, he rebuked them. James wanted to call down judgement of fire upon those that opposed the message of the Kingdom of God and Jesus rebuked him saying ‘you don’t know what spirit you are of’ (Luke 9:55), and he explained to his disciples that the authority of the political State of worldly government operated from a power base that oppressed and lorded itself over people. (Matthew 20:22).

Jesus taught them that this was not the way for them to exercise their spiritual authority, which was based on servanthood, just as Jesus demonstrated his own spiritual authority when he emptied himself of Divine privilege and became as a servant Saviour to all the world (Philippians 2:7). And he did not judge the world. John 12:46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day In other words, there will be an accounting, but it will be in God’s way and in God’s time.

Paul wrote that God does not authorize or empower Christians in their condemnation of the sins of the world but he empowers the message of reconciliation through Jesus. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them, and has committed to us this message of reconciliation. (2Corinthians 5:19). And he also wrote ‘For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? (Church discipline issues) God judges those outside (1Corinthians 5:12).

We are here to live a life of faith that is consciously aware that we are IN Christ as a New Creation (him always with us and us always with him) having inherited all the spiritual blessings of the Father as sons and daughters with his Son. We can live this life of spiritual blessing and share the good news of the Grace of God with people and prepare their hearts to receive Jesus as Saviour. The Apostle Peter encourages us to always be ready for this - but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect… (1Peter 3:15)

At one end of today’s global worldly population there are multitudes of worldly people of good will made in the image of God, that have little or no faith in God and are simply living out of a good conscience as best they can. They are depending upon their skills and experience and integrity to live a good life and be happy. At the other end of the worldly population there are wrong hearted people (also made in the image of God) who behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that is harmful to themselves and all those around them. God sees the hearts and will deal differently with each individual as he decides.

There is also the political State of worldly government that operates from a power base that can be corrupted and oppress and lord itself over people, asserting itself for its own ideological ends. It creates institutions and deceptive power hierarchies to preserve and consolidate its power and wealth. Jesus told his disciples not to build his Church into a political power base to contest with political worldly power over the State. When Jesus was sentenced by Pilate, who embodied the political State of Rome in that moment, Jesus said. “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” ( John 18:36) Judas had meanwhile betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver because he realized that Jesus was not a political activist in a contest for political power and he was bitterly disappointed in him. The closest thing to power for Judas was the money. This does not mean that Christians should not get involved in politics as citizens of the State, and it is a good idea if they can have leadership influence as that may be their gift and calling. That is simply being a responsible citizen. But they do not speak for the Church, they simply live out of Christ. They have no authority to speak for the Church and they have no mandate to judge unbelievers for their sins. If as a parent and as a citizen in a democratic country I am offended at a school that my child attends in allowing transgender males to occupy female bathrooms, it is my business as a citizen to oppose this politically and take whatever action I can to see that kind of a practice was changed. That is being personally active as a citizen that lives in a political world where we have freedom of speech and protest and the right to vote, but it is not Christian political activism in God’s name against the State.

There have always been times when Christians have been persecuted for their beliefs and this will never change, and no secular laws will ever effectively change this attitude of the world against Christians who give obedience to God rather than man because of being forced to do something against their conscience before God. When Peter and the apostles was forbidden to preach the Gospel by the leaders of the nation of Israel, he said to them. ‘We must obey God rather than men’. (Acts 5:29). And consequently, they were put in prison, but an angel released them. Peter later writes to the Church and advises them on how to respond to persecution. 1Peter 3:15 And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. "And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled." But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. If Christians live the gospel of good news of the love and forgiveness of God and preach that, the Holy Spirit will bear witness to that, and God will supernaturally confirm it. Mark 16:19 So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.

Church leaders must ask God for wisdom in these matters and teach their people to follow the ways and the words of Jesus. We are living in times when God is allowing the works of darkness to be seen for what they are, and the more the darkness is revealed the more God’s light will be upon his people. The Church does not need political power, it needs God’s power from Heaven, and one is gained at the expense of the other – we do the choosing. And God chooses ordinary Christians to often shine as lights in this way, not always Christians of prominence or wealth or political power. A person simply needs to stand for God in their particular situation of challenge. 1Corinthians 1:27 Look at your brothers and sisters who were chosen, that not many were wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.

The spirit of God’s Church has compassion on the suffering of humanity, acting to bless and comfort people in their pain and suffering, to be loving and forgiving and motivated to bring people closer to God so that their souls will be healed and saved. The Christian heart and mind and will of God’s Church of love and mercy has created institutions based on these values for centuries. Those institutions have served the world through education and nurture and care of a suffering humanity. This heart of God’s mercy towards the world is the overflow of the justice and mercy of God that has been poured upon us through the New Covenant and gratefully received, and we know that when we show mercy, we are shown more mercy (Matthew 5:7). It is the activity of God’s grace upon the human heart that brings the individual spirit into life out of death Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).

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CHURCH AND DISPUTES OF FAITH Romans 14:1 Accept and receive those who are weak in the faith, though not with a view to settling disputes. Don’t criticize them for having different ideas from yours about what is right and wrong.

When Paul wrote his only letter to the church in Rome he had never been there and didn’t get to go there for many years to come. The Roman church was a mixture of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and there were disputes between the groups about how to honour God. The Jewish Christians believed that they had to stay faithful to the Old Testament food laws about abstaining from meat and to the observance of all the Jewish Sabbaths, while the Gentile Christians were growing in a robust New Testament faith with freedom in the simplicity that was in Christ.

Each group had a differently developed conscience regarding the rights and wrongs of the practice of Christianity and harsh and unloving judgement of one another was going on between them. Paul had been among the most learned of Jewish teachers and was also the one that God had given revelation to concerning the Gospel of Christ as the Saviour of the whole world, so he was the one chosen by God to address these critical issues of religious division. Paul wanted to see the Jewish Christians become stronger in faith in the simplicity of Christ, and he wanted the Gentile Christians to not boast about their stronger faith but to exercise faith that worked through love (Galatians 5:6).

Romans 14:2 For instance, don’t argue with them about whether or not to eat meat that has been offered to idols. You may believe there is no harm in this, but the faith of others is weaker; they think it is wrong and will go without any meat at all and eat vegetables rather than eat that kind of meat. Those who think it is all right to eat such meat must not look down on those who won’t. And if you are one of those who won’t, don’t find fault with those who do. For God has accepted them to be his children. They are God’s servants, not yours. 4. They are responsible to him, not to you. Let him tell them whether they are right or wrong (the work of the Holy Spirit). And God is able to make them do as they should (Philippians 2:13).

Paul believed and preached the simplicity of Christ and that the Old Testament rites and ordinances were just shadows of the reality that was Christ. He himself came under criticism from both sides of these disputes because he had freedom in his faith to both comply with the Jewish rites or to discard them. He said he had become all things to all men that he might win more people to Christ ‘I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings (1Corinthians 9:1). Paul lived a life of faith that worked though love. He taught that the old life of limited human effort passes through the cross and is resurrected into a new living work of the Spirit of God within us. God commends the work of faithfulness, but he empowers the work of faith.

Romans 14:5 Some think that Christians should observe certain days as special days to worship God, but others say every day alike belongs to God. On questions of this kind everyone must decide for himself in his own mind (nous)

This word nous is a description of the conscience, and it is described as the intellectual understanding and reason as the capacity for spiritual truth, the higher powers of the soul, the faculty of perceiving divine things, and of recognising good and evil –- The other Greek word for conscience in the Bible is sunedeisis which means to perceive a notion of something in dialogue with one’s own mind).

Romans 14:6 If you have special days for worshiping the Lord, you are trying to honor him so you are doing a good thing. So is the person who eats meat that has been offered to idols; he is thankful to the Lord for his provision and he is doing right. And the person who won’t touch such meat, he, too, is anxious to please the Lord, and is thankful. We are not our own masters to live or die as we ourselves might choose. Living or dying we follow the Lord. Either way we are his. Christ died and rose again for this very purpose, so that he can be our Lord both while we live and when we die. You have no right to criticize your brother or look down on him. Each of us will stand personally before the Judgment Seat of God and will give an account of himself to God. (And the inner motivation of the hearts will be revealed - 1Corinthians 4:5)

The Jewish Christians observed the Old Testament Commandment of Sabbath days of gathering together as a time of resting from all worldly labour and effort in order to honour God.

The Gentile Christians mostly observed Sunday for gathering together to worship and share fellowship in the breaking of bread and the preaching of the Word because Sunday came to be called the Lord’s Day by the first Christians in the Book of Acts (Ch.20). It replaced the Jewish Sabbath to honour the day that Jesus rose from the dead, on the first day of the week, and it was the day on which Paul directed them to give their tithes and offerings to the lord (1Corinthians 16:2). Paul would preach in the synagogues on the Saturdays whenever he had an opportunity in his travels, and he would gather with Gentile Christians on a Sunday.

But Paul really saw every day as a Sabbath day of resting in the finished work of Jesus by living to the Lord and with the Lord day in and day out, not for just one seventh of the week.

Romans 14:13 So don’t criticize each other anymore. Try instead to live in such a way that you will never make your brother stumble by letting him see you doing something he thinks is wrong. As for myself, I am perfectly sure on the authority of the Lord Jesus that there is nothing really wrong with eating meat that has been offered to idols. But if someone believes it is wrong, then he shouldn’t do it because for him it is wrong. And if your brother is bothered by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you go ahead and eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died. Don’t do anything that will cause criticism against yourself even though you know that what you do is right. For, after all, the important thing for us as Christians is not what we eat or drink but stirring up goodness and peace and joy from the Holy Spirit. If you let Christ be Lord in these affairs, God will be glad; and so will others. In this way aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up.

The word for conscience is a word of significant meaning for our inner life. Our English word derives from two words, con=with, and science=knowledge. This knowledge stems from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the management of knowing good from evil differs with each individual. We noted earlier the other Greek words for conscience in the Bible, nous and sunedeisis. The conscience is a spiritual sensibility about what is right and wrong that God places in each person’s heart, then as children we are taught what is right and wrong by parents according to their religion and culture and community values, and some children develop a more moral sensibility than others.

Romans 14:20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

The conscience for Israel was formed by the Ten Commandments and provided the most complete and most comprehensive fountain of the wisdom and knowledge of God’s nature which was designed to bring them to maturity individually and as a community. The Commandments express God’s ideology of relational integrity between us and God and between us and one another.

Under the New Covenant the wisdom and knowledge of God contained in the Commandments is written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. In this way we become led into all truth, directed, guided and steered as the Holy Spirit arranges learning events for us so that we come to know God and become known of God.

The story of the Apostle Peter is an example of this journey of transformation from a constricted Jewish religious conscience into a clear and strong Christian conscience. His first lesson was when he argued with God about having to eat with and visit with a Gentile Centurion which was strictly against Jewish Law, but this Gentile wanted to hear the Gospel. God won the argument and the Centurion and his household were saved. Peter was even rebuked by Paul in front of the other Apostles for causing division in the Gentile church at Antioch. Peter had been eating freely with the Gentile Christians for some time but when a group of Jewish Christian leaders were sent from Jerusalem to check out the church Peter refused to eat with the Gentiles and caused much division and offense. He learned many lessons the hard way and his transformation of conscience was accompanied by a transformation from his ethnic and religious identity into his true eternal and spiritual identity in Christ.

It is on this journey where we all come to find our true identity which was created by God in our spirit in eternity before we were born. As we grow in the freedom of faith and love through the grace of God, we ultimately become the real self that can be expressed through our transformed soul each day of our life.

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THE BLOOD OF OUR COMMUNION

Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household.  Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. It is the LORD'S Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

That miraculous event was celebrated by Israel every year during their Feast of Passover to acknowledge that life was given to God’s people through the blood of the Passover Lamb while death came upon the families of Egypt. There were many such rituals that God commanded Moses to have Israel perform to the most precise detail after they escaped from Egypt and journeyed through the wilderness towards the Promised land. Every year would begin with the ritual of the Feast of Passover which was followed fifty days later by the Feast of Pentecost and followed later in the seventh month of the year by the Feast of Tabernacles. For fifteen hundred years the sacrificial blood of animals was spilled on the ground day after day by the priests of Israel for the forgiveness of their sins. God told Moses to say to the people ‘I have given you the blood to sprinkle upon the altar as an atonement for your souls; it is the blood that makes atonement because it is the life’ (Leviticus 17:11). Blood speaks of life as well as forgiveness.

But since the time of Jesus there is no more spilling of blood every year on the ritual Feast of Passover for the sins of Israel. The Bible says that John saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), The blood of Jesus as our Passover Lamb spilled on the dusty ground of Calvary was the last drop of lifeblood to be spilled, and that blood is for the sin of all Mankind, (The whole earth) and it brings the life of God to all humanity. His blood is the blood of our Communion, the union of his life with our life. And since the time of Jesus, we no longer live by rituals. The Bible says these were just symbolic of the inner reality of Christ and his life working within us  Colossians 2:17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality is of Christ. 

The only way that the blood of Jesus can be applied to us today is to our hearts in the inner work of the healing and salvation of our souls so that we can live in partnership with Jesus, sharing in his life of faith and love wherever we may be, as the Scripture says. ‘But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ’ (Eph. 2:13). And just as Israel lived with the day-to-day reality of the blood of sacrifice so can we also live with a day-to-day consciousness of having the life of Christ working within us. That is what it means for us to be ‘saved’, thanking him for the blood applied to our lives

The blood of Jesus cannot be applied by us upon any external thing as it is solely for the inner redemptive work upon the soul of mankind, even though some Christians oddly enough still practice ‘applying the blood’ or ‘pleading the blood’ upon their houses or their cars for protection and safety. Israel only ever once sprinkled the blood of the Lamb upon the doorpost of their houses in Egypt. Our faith in Jesus’ blood has nothing to do with houses, and ‘pleading the blood’ does not exist in Scripture. That belongs to the same area of superstition in the way that some other Christians believe in having a St. Christopher medal hanging in the front windscreen of the car to protect them while driving. These are no better than a rabbit’s foot, and I can’t find that in the Bible either.

Under the Old covenant every spiritual act that the people did was performed as a formal ritual. This is not the way we live Christianity.  Jesus told the disciples to baptise people, he also told them to share Communion in eating of the bread and in drinking of the cup. He also said that the true worshippers would worship in spirit and in truth.  Jesus did not make these activities into formal rituals, but the Church has unfortunately turned these faith practices into a multitude of formal rituals that have now  become the reality instead of ‘the reality that is of Christ’, and contention over these formalities has plagued the Church with disunity for centuries.

Baptism is the reality of our identification by faith in the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus and our commitment to living in newness of life through Christ (Romans 6). Worship in spirit and in truth is the physical act of offering our bodies to God as a living sacrifice in humble adoration and prayer and the singing of our praise to God, and in our loving service to others. (Romans 12). Sharing Communion is our participation together in the mystery of the hidden life of Christ within us as Jesus said at the last supper. This cup that is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood. (Luke 22:20). We stop and linger in a moment-by-moment powerful remembrance of our oneness with God and with one another in the Body of Christ, as the lifeblood of his heart beats within our hearts.

In this life it is important for us to know what we believe, to know what we should do, and to know what to hope for. We are living in a world where many do not know what they believe, so they don’t know what they should do, and they have nothing to hope for. 

Knowing what we can believe The world had to wait for nearly two thousand years for the supernatural work of the lifeblood of Jesus to become the fulfilment of life on earth for humanity. The Bible says that John saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), but it was more than just taking away sins, it was so that we could have life and not death. Jesus died and rose again to give us his life. Humanity could now be relieved from its mindset of separation from God and could have the faith and confidence to walk close to God and get to know him as a person. 

Knowing what we should do Hebrews 10: 19 Therefore, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus … let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience  As we spend more and more time in his presence, we receive the wisdom and guidance for our daily lives from the Holy Spirit to do God’s will for our lives. (1John 2:27 – the anointing abides in us and teaches us).

Having a hope for the future. We no longer put faith in our rituals or demand signs and wonders but in a powerful life that dwells within us which becomes the main thought and activity of the renewed mind. This divine loving intelligent life never ceases to operate in us, and this is the essence and substance of our faith and gives us hope for the future. 

This God life is the powerful life energy that created the universe and orders everything in it, and this indwelling life in us creatively orders and reorders everything in our personal life and in our immediate world of people and things. If God who designed the movements of the galaxies and who created every molecule and atom and unseeable particle of matter and who has his eye on every sparrow, how much more is he vitally and personally interested in us as his beloved family that live ordinary lives and do unspectacular things. He yearns to participate in those ordinary yet special things with us in close and intimate Communion.

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FORGIVENESS AND MERCY AND YOM KIPPUR

John the Baptist was the messenger that had been sent by God to prepare the way before Jesus, preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins that would come through Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world  Luke 7:29 When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, and were baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.

One of those Pharisees who had rejected the teaching of John the Baptist that day afterwards invited Jesus to his house for a meal where there were many guests, and among them was a woman of ‘the city’ who was one of those who had repented and been baptised along with some of the other guests. Such dinners of hospitality were often open and public for the Jewish community with both local and regional guests and where many topics of the day were discussed.

Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The Pharisee that had invited Jesus to his house and many of the company that were there would have rejected the call to repentance and the offer of baptism from John and there would have been an awkward division in spirit between those who had accepted John’s teaching about Jesus and those who had scorned it. Nonetheless because of the growing reputation of Jesus as a prophet and a teacher, as well as the reports of his working of signs and wonders there was due respect given to him by the host and by other guests that were there. When the woman began to wash and anoint the feet of Jesus the Pharisee whose name was Simon said to himself, either by muttering or just by thinking silently, that Jesus’ behaviour was scandalous, and as the host, he was aware of the other guests who were also looking askance at the spectacle. Whether or not Jesus heard Simon mutter or whether he simply perceived the obvious disapproval in his spirit it does not say. Jesus broke in on the awkward moment with a tantalizing hypothetical for Simon about two people having debts cancelled, with one debt ten times larger than the other and asking Simon which debtor would have the greatest love for the moneylender. 

Simon was compelled by logic to give the correct answer and Jesus uses the situation contrasting Simon’s lack of courtesy and honour to Jesus as his guest by ignoring him, compared to the sinful woman’s extravagant act of loving appreciation and gratitude.  The woman continued to wash and anoint the feet of Jesus with an outpouring of gratitude and love that were sentiments born out of her transformed soul. Her extravagance in honouring Jesus with such a greeting of love outshone the Pharisee’s unceremonious welcome to Jesus as his guest and she was able to now acknowledge Jesus as the forgiving Messiah God that John had proclaimed him to be.  Some guests asked the question who is it that can forgive sins because only God can do that’, but Jesus then brings home his point that the women who had sinned so much and who was forgiven so much had also loved so very much in return.  The woman is traditionally believed to be Mary Magdalene because in the verses directly following the above account, Mary Magdalene who had seven demons cast out from her is mentioned along with two other prominent women in the community who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities and they as well as others provided for Jesus and his disciples out of their means.

In this outstanding story of contrasts, we see the extremes of utter sinfulness and utter forgiveness which are only possible in the expansive love and mercy of God. And in this mighty comparison we have the major point of the story which is that God has always desired oneness with us as his sinful creation, and yet sin has separated us from him.  But sin has not separated him from us. He pursues us relentlessly into our repentance and faith because forgiveness and mercy are always on God’s mind and heart. Jesus lived forgiving and he died forgiving - Forgive them father for they know not what they do.

From the moment Mankind first sinned it was God’s loving and determined intention to make us aware of his forgiveness for our sinfulness. Our yes to that resolute appeal is our repentance. Sinfulness was Mankind’s wilful self-determination to pursue its own self-interest, expressing its independent mindset of separation from God.  God formalised his commitment to bridge the gap of separation that sin had caused between humanity and himself by making a Covenant of partnership between himself and the nation of Israel, and Israel became the test case for all of humanity.  The Old Covenant was all about sin and forgiveness through a ritualised structure of blood sacrifice being made as an offering for their sins, and instruction in wisdom and righteousness being given to them though the Law so that they would know explicitly what sin was because of the Commandments that they had to obey, but never could and never did. That Covenant also offered many blessings for obedience and a Promised Land for an inheritance.

This arrangement was as close that God could get to bridging the gap that sin had caused. It was not perfect because it was only in the strength of the human will that people could try to stay in line with what God had commanded, and no one could ever manage to stay in alignment with God’s requirements. But day after day sins were committed and day after day the sacrifices were offered, and day after day sins were forgiven. this went on for fifteen hundred years. Many were able to draw close to God over that time, but no one throughout that time could ever achieve the oneness with God that was his eternal purpose. The day after day sacrifices were offered to obtain forgiveness for explicitly known sins but there was another kind of unclassified sin called ‘unintentional sin’ and this also marred the conscience because people knew they were falling short and were not sure of what sacrifice brought them forgiveness. This kind of sin required not so much forgiveness but mercy and such was the mercy of God that he instituted a special day once a year called the Day of Atonement for the cleansing of all the unintentional sins of all of Israel. (Hebrews 9:7 the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people) Unintentional – agnoema – shortcoming - error. a sin of ignorance or thoughtlessness.

These sins were offered up by the High priest on behalf of all of Israel and the blood of the sacrifice was offered with the sprinkling of blood seven times on the mercy seat upon the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 16), ‘seven times’ speaking of the fulness of mercy on offer from God. ‘Seven times’ is also a Biblical code for events that occur in the end time fullness of time and Jesus told Peter to forgive seventy times seven times, so forgiveness and mercy are both to be an emphasis in God’s end times purposes.  That was the greatest day in their year (Yom Kippur) and it speaks to us not only of the abundance of God’s mercy upon their ‘sins of ignorance’ but it speaks to us of God’s mercy upon us today where we unwittingly keep falling short while intending to be faithful. It shows God’s eternal purpose for us as his children to know oneness with him through our faith in Jesus who is our atonement (however you wish to pronounce it). 

The new Covenant tells us that the Law is now written on our hearts, so the Holy Spirit can now clearly show us what sin is and reveal how great God’s forgiveness is and to turn our hearts away from sin and turn our hearts towards God (repentance). We do not have to offer sacrifices all the time because of the one sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. The New Covenant also tells us that our sins and our iniquities he will remember no more! It also tells us that he will have mercy on all of our unintentional sins of ignorance, our constant falling short that puts us out of alignment with his perfection. Our Day of Atonement is all day every day. We still have sin within us in our humanity and God still closes the gap of separation by giving us the bridge of forgiveness and mercy. We often walk across the footpath of the bridge of forgiveness with a heart of repentance, but we mostly move along a moving footway of mercy for our unintentional sins. We all need that moving footway all the time and we all need to be consciously aware of its gracious provision all the time.

So this story about Mary Magdalene had to be extravagant and emotional because it is a story of God’s most determined intention for our lives, that we are at one with him and with peace in our hearts. Only by knowing this inner peace can we possibly love him back, and Jesus sealed that reality for Mary by telling her that her faith had saved her and that she could go in peace – the peace of oneness with Jesus.  So if you feel at any time that you need to be closer to God than you are, remember God’s bridge of determined love for us. It is still about sin and forgiveness and mercy but it is God’s bridge, and it is for us to move confidently across this bridge of his grace into his Kingdom life where all things are made new.

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WATER INTO WINE

The first miracle believed to be performed by Jesus is the changing of the water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. Mary the mother of Jesus is an invited guest, and it is held that Mary and Jesus were actually present as family, along with other relatives and friends and some disciples of Jesus. This is supposed because Mary the mother of Jesus takes a very close familial role of responsibility in noticing that the guests were running out of wine and sees herself as being in the place to give orders to the servants, as it is the place of family to attend to the needs of the guests for the bride and bridegroom and their parents.

John starts his account of the events at the wedding by saying ‘On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there (John2:1), which prompts us to go back and read what had been happening on the first and second day of whatever Jesus had been doing. It states in chapter one that John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus who had been baptizing people in the Jordan River and telling people that there was One coming that was greater than himself then saw Jesus coming towards him and proclaimed him as ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. This was the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, so this is what happened on the first day. Two of John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus on that first day if they could now become his disciples instead of John’s and Jesus tells them to follow him. Andrew is mentioned and he goes to get his brother Simon Peter who also becomes his disciple that day. We then read in verse 43 ‘The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee’ and we take this as the second day. He found Philip there and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Then Philip found Nathanael. That second day was about Jesus gathering disciples. The next day would have been the third day where the next verse starts in John Chapter two with the story of the wedding feast in Cana where Jesus and his new disciples are guests.

John 2:1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until last.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. This miracle is the first of what are believed to be the seven ‘signs’ of the coming of the Kingdom of God through Jesus in John’s Gospel. The other six signs are said to include three major healings, the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus walking on the water, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. (John 4:54) (John 5:18) (John 6:1-14) (John 6:28) (John 9:16) (John 12:18).

The word for ‘sign’ in the original language is semeion. A sign is a supernatural event just like a miracle (dynamis), but a sign is also a ‘signpost’ pointing to the coming of the Kingdom of God with the mighty and dramatic change that comes to humanity when the divine being of God is joined to his created being of humanity through Jesus. This is the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit into his Kingdom, through his Son. Mary had told Jesus that they had run out of wine for the guests and Jesus was taken aback by her pointed remark which implied that he had the power to miraculously change the situation, and he commented that this didn’t have anything to do with him, because his hour had not yet come. Mary seems to disregard his comment and tells the servants to “Do whatever he tells you.” The Bible then relates how Jesus goes into action and tells the servants to fill six stone jars with water. The Master of Ceremonies then tasted the excellent miraculous wine and makes the legendary statement to the bridegroom “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until last.” There were six stone jars at the entrance of the house and these were for the religious ritual purification of the washing of each person’s hands and feet as they entered. The number six symbolises our fallen human nature - Mankind was created on the sixth day of creation and the water represents the waters of chaos with creation beginning with the Spirit of God hovering above the waters Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep (thom - an abyss as a chaos of surging mass of water) and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The water speaks of the disorder of our natural human life which waits to be creatively touched by the Spirit of God. The water in the six stone jars being changed into wine symbolises an inner supernatural transformation where we become a New Creation, being made one in spirit with God. The water does not cease to exist but it becomes transformed into a new creation reality.

On this occasion, Jesus did what his mother asked him, but the Bible says that Jesus did nothing unless he was told by his Father to do it. Jesus would have understood that his mother had been told by his Father what he was to do (Mary had indeed heard from Father God on many occasions before this). This speaks to us not only of a family occasion at a wedding, but it speaks of Father ‘s family plan for humanity on earth which is that through Jesus, mankind was destined to dwell with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all time. The Family in Heaven always was a family that lived with one another and for one another as one. Theirs is the perfect state of relationship and that was forsaken by Adam and Eve for all of humanity when they believed Satan who charged God with being self-interested and not perfectly loving to us. Jesus has reversed this lie into the truth of God’s perfect and inclusive love for us. 1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one. We are now part of the three in one God Family and we share their life and being and purpose and meaning. Jesus had explained to his disciples shortly before his death and resurrection that their lives would forever be intermingled with himself and his Father and the Holy Spirit. John 14:20 In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. 26. And the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things. John has been unfolding the Kingdom truth in this story that Jesus would be the one who contains the Father and the holy Spirit within his earthly being and so he is central to our being included in the Trinity because while being fully God, he took upon himself and into himself our human nature with all of its limitations, as we see in the following Scripture Colossians 2:9 For in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. Jesus is the one who causes us to know that the love the Father has for us is the same as the love that the Father shares fully with Jesus himself. Jesus was also the one through whom he sent the holy Spirit, and it is to Jesus that we continually pray to be filled with his Spirit. John the Baptist had just previously said ‘I baptise with water but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’ and this supernatural act of God of the water being transformed into wine within us is the intermingling and the flow of God’s life in us and though us.

We are fulfilled in our lives when we go with that flow and do not resist it and then we become like it and reflect it and all the while we try to observe what is in us that is resisting it. We can now have faith that this flow of life is acting towards us, and as we yield to this flow of God’s life it empowers and heals wherever it touches us, in spirit soul and body. Belonging to the Heavenly family of God through Jesus becomes the realm or sphere in which we now live towards his human family in the earth. It is Jesus himself, who is the Lord of peace, who is to be present and ruling in our midst. Ephesians 1:4 This was the way God planned it before he even created the world, choosing the destiny of us as humanity being joined to divinity in Jesus, complete and innocent and unashamed of who we are in our close love and intimacy with him. The love and joy and peace of Jesus is to hold sway over every aspect of our lives, and instead of pouring out of our own weary humanity we can now invite people into this family by offering the life-giving new wine of His Spirit of grace and love to everybody around us, and always being aware of ourselves as water being mingled into wine.

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LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD Jesus spoke about the kingdom of Heaven in parables. The word parable’ comes from the two Greek words, para which means ‘alongside ‘and bole which means ‘to throw’, so a parable is an Illustration or symbol of a certain reality that is forcefully thrown down beside a known truth. It is more than just an approximate likeness of something because it mysteriously contains a higher truth and has the power when it is thrown beside a known truth to turn our thinking upside down and to make us rethink our perceptions of reality.

Matthew 20:1 The kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”

This parable throws all of our perceptions of fair work policies into disarray, not just for trade unionists but for any fair-minded person. The Kingdom of God does not seem to obey our ideas of merit-based earning or reward. That is because the parable is about the grace of God, and our conventional way of thinking does not understand God’s gifts of love and grace and mercy. God’s gifts come without anyone earning them or deserving them.

The owner of the vineyard seems fair and just in the beginning of the story and then he seems incredibly generous towards the end of the story but then he seems unfair and unjust when those who came to work early compare themselves with those who came to work late, and they complained with a whole range of emotions common to all of us like anger, self-pity, or resentment or fear.

The owner of the vineyard for some reason had a compelling need for more and more workers to come and work in his vineyard and he went out time after time till very late in the working day to get as many people into his vineyard as he could. There must have been something special apart from wages that he thought that vineyard had to offer, and he contends with the workers for them to try and accept things the way they are, and to be satisfied with what he had to offer them.

When Jesus told this parable about everyone getting the same wages no matter what hours they were working he was teaching us to trust him and to be satisfied that, what he has to offer us is far greater than anything we think we can do to make life work the way we want it to.

Adam and Eve had everything they needed to fulfill their lives by having God’s loving care and protection and provision and presence, with them every moment of their lives. But they were tempted to believe that they could be more satisfied if they went their own way, and to get something better for themselves than what God had to offer them. They were told by the serpent that God was unfair and unjust, so they took on a mindset of separation from God’s will for themselves and they believed Satan’s lie of darkness for them. Mankind ended up with a desperate sense of unfulfillment in the soul, but God already had a magnificent plan in place to redeem humanity and to bridge the gap of separation that their disobedience had caused and that had damaged their soul.

Father’s love responded to the desperate sense of unfulfillment in the soul of humanity by sending his Son to die on the cross and rise again for us and to plant his life in us through the holy Spirit. That inner life grows and grows according to our simple faith in believing in its power to meet that uttermost need in our life and not the self-fulfilling needs that we think are more important and that we work so hard for to achieve.

God created us for our lives to be fulfilled by responding to his desire to draw us closer to himself and to make our lives one with his life as a new creation by simply believing and receiving his grace and love. But our old creation humanity had designed its own self-help programs of working out how to be fulfilled in life in ways that vary from person to person. Those programs are hard work for us in our emotions and confuse our value systems and our mindset and they end up failing. That is why repentance means being changed from the old mindset of separation from God into the new creation mindset of oneness with God. And God grants this as a gift of grace rather than through our well-intentioned self-effort.

You can erase your lifelong self-help programs and be reprogramed by God’s grace instead of your effort. You simply learn to recognise the upsetting emotion that you experience when you feel that you are in reaction to the adverse things that are happening or that threaten to happen in your life. It could be anger, self-pity, or resentment or fear just like the labourers in the vineyard. You will recognise it by the words that come out of your mouth or that you say internally to yourself. There is usually a familiar commentary as in for Anger; ‘I’m going to let everybody know I’m just not putting up with this!’ or self-pity; ‘Not again, Why me? Its just not fair!’ or fear;’ Oh no what am I going to do now?’ If you try and erase a computer program you get a message on the screen ‘are you sure you want to erase this program?‘ and you say yes and put in your password. With God you get the same message and you say yes and the password is ‘help me Lord I need to find grace to help’ – and even though the old program keeps wanting to restart you are now on the journey and God will complete what you asked him to.

Paul summed it up in Romans 4:4 If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay and we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God, his gift not your work.

When we look at how this parable speaks to us spiritually it reveals how God is continually extending his invitation of grace to all of us just as the owner of the vineyard wanted as many people as he could get into that special vineyard. God desires for everyone to receive his good news of love and grace because he sees the desperate need in every human soul to be fulfilled by the gift of his own life working within them.

Being satisfied with what God offers us is the perfect test of surrendered faith in our Father God through Jesus, especially in times of difficulty and adversity. When we surrender in faith to God’s goodness working for us in every situation, we will find his wisdom to make the right choices for a way through that situation. As well as letting God reprogram our self-fulfillment programs there is a simple prayer we can offer as often as we can remember to. It is ‘Thank you Lord for your desire to draw me closer to you and to make me one with you in everything that happens in my life.’ That prayer of faith becomes God’s work and our rest.

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THE GOOD SAMARITAN Wherever Jesus walked with his disciples, crowds would follow him, and he would sometimes instruct them and sometimes pray for the people and sometimes answer their questions. On this particular occasion there were Lawyers and Pharisees in the crowd and a Lawyer asked Jesus a question. Luke 10:25 Now, a lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind’ and your neighbor as yourself.’ Jesus said, ‘You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.’ (IE. a fulfilled life, not just an existence!) But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a priest came down that way. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to that place, looked at him and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he set him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day when he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, ‘Take care of him. I will repay you whatever else you spend when I return.’ “Now which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” 

This seems like an abrupt ending, “Go and do likewise.” as if Jesus had given a perfectly tidy answer and was ready to look at the group and say, ‘Next question?’ But what he said was a stinging blow into the conscience of each one that heard him. That story would have lived on in their minds, as it lives on in people’s minds all over the world even to this day – ‘Go and do likewise’.

Jesus had answered the question from the legal expert of ‘who is my neighbour?’ but that was not the original topic of conversation. The lawyer’s original question was ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The lawyers and Pharisees, as well as the priests were the ones who were the custodians of the theological and ceremonial culture of Judaism at that time and they were violently resentful and resistant to the wisdom and the power of the teachings of Jesus. They were forever trying to trap him in some incorrect interpretation of the Law and the Scriptures. Jesus often put them on the wrong foot by answering their questions with another question and on this occasion, he asked the lawyer ‘What is written in the law? How do you read it?’ and the lawyer correctly answered, that to inherit eternal life was all about loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbour as yourself, and this is precisely what Jesus wanted to discuss, which was about love between us and God and between us and one another. That was because Jesus was teaching about God’s Kingdom of love in the earth. That love comes to us from God and is to be lived through us and to remain for all time on the earth and then from age to age in eternity. This is the inheritance of eternal life. So Jesus told the lawyer that he had answered correctly concerning God’s eternal Kingdom love, and he told him to go and live out of that love and he would have the eternal life he was seeking. However, the lawyer did not like being given that penetrating answer, so he deflected Jesus with another question and said ‘Who is my neighbour?’

Jesus then spoke the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story was set within the current religious and cultural customs and moral standards of Judaism of the day.  When Jesus related how the priest first and then the Levite both ignored and even avoided having anything to do with the man who had been beaten up, that would have stung the ears of any priests and Levites who were listening, but the rest of the Jewish listeners could perhaps have been thinking ‘that poor guy could have been me!’ And they probably had an expectation that some good Jewish person, probably someone just like themselves, would come to the rescue and be applauded as being a good neighbour and be rewarded by God for their virtue. But that didn’t happen. It was a hated and religiously despised Samaritan, a betrayer of the Jewish faith - and that would have stung everybody! That admonition from Jesus about their Jewish tribalism targeted all of their narrow wrongheadedness because Jesus was telling them that every other human being was their neighbour, even the unworthy Gentiles and the hated Samaritans. The coming Kingdom was open to everyone. The Lawyer even had to admit that the Samaritan was the one who showed mercy and therefore was the true neighbour to the poor beaten up Jewish man. 

That alone would have been offensive enough to everybody’s ears, but there was more yet to come because Jesus was talking about more than just ‘who is my neighbour?’ Jesus was talking about loving your neighbour. What the Good Samaritan did was more than being a good neighbour, he was a loving good neighbour and what he did was beyond any reasonable thing for all of them to imagine. Jesus told them that when the Samaritan traveller saw the man ‘he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he set him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day when he departed, he took out two denarii (two day’s wages) and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, ‘Take care of him. I will repay you whatever else you spend when I return’.

The Good Samaritan’s virtuous act of love drew no applause from he crowd that day. The Good Samaritan simply did what he did, and no reward is mentioned for what he did other than he acted in love and compassion. Jesus was telling them, and he is telling us today that this kind of love is its own reward even when it is not appreciated. That story of the loving Good Samaritan is clearly a picture of Jesus himself who sees us beaten up by life and left by the roadside and who takes us to a safe place of rest (which the Bible says is an Inn) where we can be cared for at his expense, and who has paid the price for our full recovery till his return.  The Inn, pandocheion is translated as ‘a place where all are received, and no one refused’.

This story is first and foremost about God’s love for us. That love never ceases, even when it gets no appreciation or applause or thanks.  God’s Love is its own reward for God himself, as it continues irresistibly till it finds someone to receive it and then it is completed, because love yearns to be received.  It doesn’t suit a lot of people that God’s love works that way because they have their own concept of justice about who deserves God’s love. 

This story is also about our love for one another. Jesus said in the parable that this kind of love is to be our fulfillment in life as a glimmer of the reality of God’s love for us And we can be empowered by grace to not only live IN but to live OUT that love, just as Paul testified that he was compelled by God’s love to do what he did in serving others (2Corinthians 5.14).

How do we experience that love?  We ask God to make HIS love real to us as we sit in his presence and thankfully receive it. That love implants itself deep into our spirit and grows there through the Holy Spirit.

How can we know that we have loved with that kind of love? We measure how we’ve loved by being willing to measure how much we haven’t loved, and then we pray for more grace to receive even more of his love. God yearns to answer that prayer, so we continually put that on top of our list with quiet assurance, because we were created to complete God’s love to us by receiving it. This is the ultimate understanding for us to have in order to be fulfilled in life on this earth. 

Our faith in God is actually our faith in his love, and that love contains all of God’s wisdom and justice and discipline and mercy and forgiveness, and his ‘no’ to us is as loving as his ‘yes’. That implanted love becomes the spiritual energy centre of our life that guides us through all circumstances and completes the goal of our salvation.

1Corinthians 13:4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Love doesn't have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, Love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, and always looks for the best, never looks back but keeps going to the end. Love never dies.  Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know truth only in part, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompleteness is cancelled.

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THE SOWER AND THE SEED Today I would like to share the parable of the Sower and the seed.

Matthew 13:3 Jesus told the people many things in parables, saying, ‘A Sower went out to sow. While he sowed, some seeds fell beside the roadway, and the birds came and devoured them. But other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up because they did not have deep soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched. And because they did not take root, they withered away. Some seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. But other seeds fell into good ground and produced grain: a hundred, sixty, or thirty times as much. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.’

Jesus explained the parable of his Kingdom to his disciples, and he described the seed as the Word of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the realm of the activity of God where he reorders everything to be aligned to his will and purpose for life on the earth through his Word. That living Word was Jesus (the Logos), who spoke the creative Word that brought the Universe into being. Jesus likens the seed that is being sown in this parable to that same living Word logos, which has the power to transform our lives when we receive this seed that is planted into our hearts. James 1:21 … receive with meekness the implanted word (Logos), which is able to save your souls. Paul said that he planted seed and that those that received it with faith were God’s field. He said it was a team effort - he planted the seed and Apollos watered it and God gave the increase (1Corinthians 3:6). The parable describes the way that farmers sowed the fields with seed. The sower was scooping seed out of a satchel that hung around his neck in front of him. He was walking on well prepared soil in a field and scattering seed as he went. There is a roadway beside the field and beside the roadway there was rocky ground in a shallow layer of soil, and between the rocky ground and the field was a deeper layer of soil that had grown random thorns and thistles. The only place where the seed can properly take root is in the good soil of the field of the hearts that are prepared to bear the life-giving grain. But seed will be scattered everywhere, and the seed is precious to God. Each one of us has a roadway seed challenge in life, and a rocky ground seed challenge and a thorns and thistles seed challenge. And each one of us has a prepared field challenge to accept God’s invitation to receive the life changing seed of faith and hope and blessing. Jesus has built redemption into every parable of the Kingdom because of the power of his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit into our hearts and he can redeem every barren roadway seed challenge and clean up every rocky ground obstruction and uproot every thorny ground chokehold upon our faith.

Jesus explained that the seed that fell on the well-trodden roadway of the world was not able to take root in people’s hearts because the seed was snatched away by birds, which represents Satan blinding people minds and hearts from God’s love and truth. The roadway (hodos) also means ‘the journey’. The world has been on a journey for thousands of years with roadways and pathways of good and evil. There have been pathways of good intention and valuable discoveries and astounding humanitarian progress and achievement. There have also been roadways of ambitious greed and self-advantage and political power and corruption. Each one of us has had to tread the well-trodden paths of the world and have seen the dangers of the places where they may lead, and we have all had our own journey that started within a certain culture or religion or influence that sent us in directions that have resulted in a mixture of successes and failures.

The routine of roadways also tends to lock people into a sense of movement from the past and into the future with only a fleeting sense of the present moment, and we can wonder where the time has gone and where it is all leading. And until we stop and ask ourselves these hard questions and ponder our ways, we have little chance of allowing the seed of God’s loving future and hope to be the implanted seed that saves our souls and to not be snatched away by the devil. We can’t avoid being in the world, but we do not have to be of the world, with its political activism and intensely strong opinions that cause emotional distress and anxiety of the soul. We can debate issues with Godly wisdom and even hold positions of power or be skilful problem solvers in the marketplace with both feet on the ground, and still live with the assurance that our hearts and minds are planted in God’s field of life and truth. When we know who we are we know where we are. The only way we get on the right path when we’re on that roadway is when we see The light of the Holy Spirit that exposes the darkness and gives the grace to walk in faith.

Jesus also explained that the shallow, rocky soil represents the heart of a person who hears the seed word and receives it joyfully, but who hasn’t given enough attention to removing the rocks and stones of emotional obstacles in their life that have held them back from going deeper in God. In the words of Jesus, ‘he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution (diogmos – trouble and harassment) arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles’. They stumble on the rocks of conflict with other people, and these become rocks of offence, and harm the quality of relationships. They lose heart and walk away. With courage and encouragement, the relational rocks can be removed through reconciliation and commitment to loving relationships and the soil can settle, the seed can remain, and the roots go deeper and a humble commitment to faith and truth and love can make one stand strong in times of adversity. And today’s text encourages us. ‘receive with meekness the implanted word (Logos), which is able to save your souls’ (James 1:21). Jesus goes on to describe the ground covered with thorns and thistles. ‘Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the delusion of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful’. The choking activity of thorns in this illustration has two points of attack. The first point of attack is the ‘cares of this world’. The word for cares is ‘merimna’ and the root meaning of this word is ‘to distract and to disunite’. This speaks of the inordinate amount of time that can go into trying to control the circumstances of life that distract the soul from pursuing the deeper inner life of faith. It also speaks of the worry that fragments and fatigues the soul. The second point of attack is the ‘delusion of riches’. When pursuing financial gain that holds out promises of success and profit we must always factor in the need of diligence and effort and risk, and without a proper balance of these three things the success and profit turns into failure and loss. Another delusion of riches is that they are what bring happiness and fulfilment to our lives. These delusions choke off the fruitful life of the faith and love within the implanted seed.

The thorns and thistles can be uprooted and die off if we seek the Lord for wisdom in our financial priorities and if we set in order our relationship to God and to those in our care. ‘for where your treasure is there will be your heart also (Matthew 6:21) Neither will the thorns and thistles choke off the good seed if we set our hearts to find his grace to help concerning the cares of this world. humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. (1Peter 5:6)

Jesus spoke simply and profoundly about preparing our hearts as the good ground. ‘But other seeds fell into good ground and produced grain: a hundred, sixty, or thirty times as much. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.’ We can picture the sower in the field as we did before, walking on well prepared soil in a field and scattering seed as he goes. Furthest from him is the roadway and a little closer is the rocky ground and a little closer still is the slightly deeper layer of thorny soil. In from the thorny ground the soil would become richer and richer the further on in you go. Right next to the thorny ground the soil might only yield thirty-fold, and then a bit further in it would yield sixty-fold, and then a little further in where the sower was walking a hundred-fold, as the differing distances from the sower signify the different qualities of the soil. This speaks to us of the various stages of the preparedness of our hearts to receiving the word of God, which is the logos, the living seed that contains the spiritual DNA of the life of Jesus within us. So, we get off the roadway, then we remove the rocks and stones then we dig up the thorns and thistles and then we become his field.

But note those final words of Jesus that speak to us clearly about ‘having ears to hear’. Whenever Jesus says ‘whoever has ears to hear let him hear’ he is telling us that there is a truth that he is teaching here at a deeper level than what people are hearing. He is teaching us how to overcome the distractions and disturbances at the emotional and mental and material levels of our lives that prevent us from hearing what he is saying. God wants to teach us how to learn his language of silence and stillness so that we will know how to hear his voice. We practice a ‘presence prayer’ attitude of receptivity and allow our usual busy emotional and mental activity to be put in brackets while we draw nearer to God and become his rich field in the deeper spiritual level of our being. And it is in this place of faith where we believe in our hearts that we are receiving into our spirit his seed of life that is changing us into his likeness.

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GO AND SIN NO MORE - (The power of Grace over sin) Today we will be talking about sin, and how Jesus told a person to ‘go and sin no more’. How and why can you say that to someone?   The answer goes back to how and when humanity lost its innocence when sin first began and how humanity can regain its innocence through the forgiveness and mercy of God through Jesus. I will discuss the fuller meaning of innocence in a few moments. John 8:1-11 Early in the morning Jesus came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So, what do you say?” they said this to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” The scribes and Pharisees were trying to catch Jesus out. If he had said ‘yes, stone her’ they would say ‘why have you stopped preaching forgiveness and mercy?’ And if he said ‘don’t stone her’ they would say that he was preaching against the Law of Moses. Jesus knew they had corrupt motives for their questions, so he began writing with his finger in the dirt, but they kept demanding an answer - determined to catch him out in some incorrect ruling of the Sacred Law. The Bible does not say what Jesus was writing - some say he was writing out the Ten Commandments, but I am inclined to think he was perhaps trying to catch them out with the deeper aspect of personal sin, which is what the conscience deals with, not with the aspect of general sin which is what the Law and Commandments deal with. As they pressed him further, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” In saying this he was saying that they could stone her if they wished, so he was not compromising the Law, but he put a condition upon the stoning, and that was that whoever had a clear conscience about their own sinfulness was qualified to judge her sin. He was challenging them to judge themselves, but they had been avoiding this all their lives and preferred to stay in the shadows of their shame and guilt by judging others instead. And when he bent down again and continued to write in the dirt they began to leave, from the oldest to the youngest. It is conceivable that he wrote their names in the dirt, and next to each one’s name the personal sin that was hidden in the darkness of their heart. The older ones left first with their heavily laden burdens of guilt and shame and the younger ones then decided to get going before the going got too tough.

Why do people cover their sin under darkness? In Johns gospel in chapter one John talks about Jesus being ‘the light’ and that ‘men loved the darkness more than the light’. That is because darkness hides them from that intolerable light that uncovers sin and shame and guilt which are all too painful to bear. There are devious ways that darkness covers shame. One way is to cover the shame with virtuous performance. Another tactic is to falsely claim the role of victim and then shame others as perpetrators. Another way is to uncover someone else’s sin and heap shame and guilt onto them, which is what these accusers were doing, and Jesus caught them at it. Jesus came to do more than just forgive us our sin. He came to help us turn from sin and turn towards the light and the love of God (repentance) and to live above sin by living in a loving family relationship with God, and for God, where we are not only forgiven from sin but mercifully covered from shame so that we can ‘go and sin no more’. Mercy allows light to operate. The first sin that was ever committed caused Adam and Eve to run and hide from their shame and guilt. Their sin was their violation of trust in the divine family relationship between them and God the Father. That violation of trust in God set the pattern for all sin that we commit as human beings. That is the overriding sin of not trusting God. Sin is the activation of separation from God.  That is the sin of unbelief – The sin whereby humanity misses the mark. This sin drives humanity into isolation from God, other people, and their innermost selves. They are ‘lost’.

Innocence Adam and Eve were completely innocent human beings, but their innocence was untested until Satan tempted them into not trusting God. As created human beings they could be tempted, and they could choose to sin because they were of a lower order of being than God who was uncreated Being and the Bible is clear that God cannot be tempted. (James 1:13). They failed the test and they sinned and that violation of relationship with God corrupted their human spirit, and they lost their innocence. Sin causes us to lose our innocence. The word for innocent is ‘innocere’ a Latin word that means ‘to not harm’ and it also means ‘not being harmed’. They had now been harmed and they could now cause harm to themselves and others, which they did.    The human seed Adam and Eve were created beings and not born from human seed, no human parents, so the human spiritual seed did not actively operate until it was passed on by Adam and Eve – DNA began doing its thing. When God rebuked Satan after he had tempted Adam and Eve into sinning, he told him that there would be enmity and conflict between the seed of his darkness and the spiritual seed of all of humanity (Genesis 3:14) This spiritual conflict between darkness and the flawed seed of humanity would lead to ongoing temptation and sin and shame and guilt and the fragmentation of the human soul for the rest of time upon the earth. Now their damaged human seed began to live on in their offspring and spiritually reproduce and it continues to do so. Jesus was the only other completely innocent Being to live upon the earth, and he was born from a seed, but that seed was perfect and incorrupt. Jesus was born from above by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The human spirit of Jesus remained incorrupt and when he spoke to his disciples about the work of darkness he said, ‘Satan has no part in me’ (John 14:30). He was tempted as are all human beings, but he never sinned. He never lost his innocence. He was never separated from the loving family bond with his Father whom he lived to please before himself.

Trees and seeds There were many trees in the Garden of Eden and the two that are mentioned were the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the Tree of Life. Those two trees produced different fruit that bore different seeds. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil and the effect of eating from that Tree gave the human soul a distorted perception of good and evil. The soul now perceived good as being what fulfilled humanity’s desires of self-interest rather than the desire to please a loving God, and that seed has passed on to all generations. The Bible speaks about ‘Those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness to light, and light into darkness’ (Isaiah 5:20)

The other tree is the Tree of Life, and that Tree bears the fruit of the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. Jesus is the incorruptible seed of the Word of God – the Logos, and the Bible says that we are born again from that seed. 1Peter 1:23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God (Logos) which lives and abides forever, That seed contains our eternal life. That is why we are able to also live out of the fruit of the Spirit – the fruit of the Tree of Life that Jesus lived, and now lives through us by the Holy Spirit. We can express that fruit in our lives though our souls - love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We can regain that place of innocence before God as his children that we were destined for through the activity of his grace upon our souls. The loss of innocence from the first sin meant we were ‘able to be harmed and able to do harm’ but regaining our innocence means we are now able to ‘be spiritually blessed and to be a spiritual blessing’. Ephesians 1:4 He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless (innocent) before Him in love. We can be part of the reversal of Adam and Eve’s original sin – The sin of their violation of trust in the divine family relationship between themselves and God and between one another. They began the blame game that we all know so well. Adam said to God ‘The woman you gave me made me do it, and Eve said, ‘the devil made me do it’. That violation of trust in God set the pattern for all sin that we commit as human beings, where our first parents lost their innocence and where we lose ours, but through the faith of Jesus we regain our innocence, and through our faith in Jesus we share in his divine family life without any shame or guilt or distortion of who we are. Jesus can say to us – ‘Go and sin no more’. Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

That lady knew in her heart that she was loved and accepted into the family of God through her brother Jesus. As she drew closer to that divine family life through Jesus, she drew more and more distant from her past life – she could now choose to go and sin no more even while living under the Law, because she now saw life from a new perspective, from an experience of the love and forgiveness of God through Jesus.  And we who are under the grace of God can moreso choose to ‘go and sin no more’ because the Bible tells us that since Jesus rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit was given to us sin does not rule over us. Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  -  And that is the power of Grace.          

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GRACE AND THE ZADOK PRIESTS 

Ezekiel was a unique prophet in that he was not only a major prophet, but he was a priest after the line of Zadok who descended from the high priest Aaron. Zadok also served as a high priest during the time of King David.  The ministry of the prophet/priest Ezekiel spanned two eras of God’s dealings with Israel. The first was the era of Israel’s falling away from God which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple of Solomon and Israel’s exile into captivity in Babylon. The next era of Ezekiel’s ministry was his account of the work of God upon Israel as the captives came back after seventy years in Babylon to the city of Jerusalem where they rebuilt the temple and repaired the city and its walls and gates. 

Ezekiel tells us that many of the Levitical priests had become unfaithful in representing God’s heart to his people and had gone after idols and become corrupt and immoral, setting a bad example to the people. God finally lifted his anointing from them and did not allow them to come near him into his holy place in the temple. He chose the Zadok clan of priests who were faithful to God’s ways and who found Grace in his presence to receive God’s heart of love and truth for his people.

Ezekiel 44.12 The Levites who were unfaithful to me when Israel went astray from me in pursuit of their idols will suffer punishment for their iniquity: Because they used to serve people in the presence of their idols they caused the community of Israel to fall into iniquity, and for that reason I swear with an oath that they will have no access to me by acting as my priests or by having access to anything I hold most sacred. They are to suffer the shame they deserve and the consequences of the shocking practices they have perpetrated. 14 I will make them responsible for duties that pertain to all the labours of the temple area and to all the work that must be done in it. 15 "But the Levitical priests who descend from Zadok, who faithfully took care of my Sanctuary when everyone else went off and left me, are going to come into my presence and serve me. They are going to carry out the priestly work of offering the devoted (heleb - the best part for dedication) sacrifices of worship that is pleasing to God. They're the only ones permitted to enter my Sanctuary. They're the only ones to approach my table and serve me, accompanying me in my work. When they enter the inner sanctuary of the inside courtyard, they are to dress in linen. No woollens are to be worn. They're to wear linen headpieces and linen underclothes - nothing that makes them sweat. When they go out into the outside courtyard where the people gather, they must first change out of the clothes in which they do the work of priests and leave them in the sacred rooms where they change back into  their everyday clothes, and they are to make clear to my people the knowledge of what is pure and what is tainted. In any cause or contention, they are to be in the position of judging things in harmony with my heart and my will.

Spending time with God was the first thing the Zadok priests did, unlike the other priests, who did their work each day with people and with things but without the presence of God.  How long would these Zadok priests spend in God’s presence? We do not know but it’s clear that if they took so much time to put those special robes on to be in the company of God that it would not have been a fleeting five-minute visit with God. They were responding to God’s personal invitation of communion with himself and accompanying him in his work and the effect of their time with God stayed with them. You might wonder about the choice of a linen headpiece instead of wool. The natural reason given here is that wool causes sweat. There’s also a spiritual reason why God went to so much trouble in the detail of things like this. There are many things in the Old Testament that hide a message for us in the New Testament. The Bible says that fine linen represents the righteousness of people who believe God and want to live close to him (Revelation 19). Righteousness means having our heart in alignment with God. This linen headpiece speaks to us of having our mind upon God, and having a mind of peace and order, and not causing sweat or anxious striving.

When the Zadok priests drew near to the Holy Place to be with God and discarded their ordinary outdoor clothing, it was like leaving the things of earth behind and allowing their spirit and soul and body to be covered with the presence of God. When they went out to meet the people, they changed their spiritual clothes for everyday clothes so that they could identify with the people. They had been in the presence of God and so they were able to carry this presence and impart it in the way they spoke and acted amongst the people. That is the work of a priest, to bring God into people’s hearts. 

The final verse says ‘they are to make clear to my people the knowledge of what is pure and what is tainted. In any cause or contention, they are to be in the position of judging things in harmony with my heart and my will’.

The Zadok priests were given God’s wisdom in their counsel to people who asked for help and advice and prayer. They were able to hear and comprehend a person’s need and were able to help people hear what God saying to them in their situations.  This was a type of the priestly ministry of Jesus as he spent time with his Father so that he would have his Father’s heart and mind on what to say to the people. 

Ezekiel prophesied of a New Covenant work of God that would one day come upon his people to redeem mankind from their human failure. He prophesied of the Grace that God would give them when he said, ‘a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you and I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways… You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:26).

We are told we are a spiritual priesthood, and we can do the same as these priests in a New Covenant way and bring God into people’s hearts with simplicity and grace. This is the same picture as us climbing the mountain of God and leaving the things of earth down below to spend time with God on his Mountain of transfiguration where we leave all our earthly cares in his hands and let his grace act upon us. We then came down the mountain prepared for that grace to work upon the needs and challenges of the day. The more time we spend silently with him knowing he is within our heart the more his presence penetrates our soul. God wants to pour his life into us in those times and the effect of that time stays with us.

God is speaking to his church in this way today. He is saying to us, ‘You are to come into the holy place which is where my heart and your heart grow closer together as one in the Spirit. You will draw near to me in that place and receive my life and you will go out from that place and give my life to others’. 

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GOD’S GRACE IN A DARK WORLD

1Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am  When Paul made that statement, he knew that what he had become through God’s grace was God’s doing, and not his doing. He also said it was not him doing the work of God, but it was the grace of Jesus working with him. That grace was God’s activity upon his soul that empowered him to respond to God in love and the surrender of his will and to know that Jesus was working through him every moment of his life. That was his faith. So what did Paul think he was before the grace of God took over his life? He thought he was a top-class man of God. Philippians 3:4 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh (natural humanity), I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

He goes on to say in another place in Galatians 1:14 … And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…

Before Paul found grace, he was part of the disorder and violence of a treacherous world in a dark time in history. After he found grace, he became part of God’s answer of love and light that overcame the darkness of that world. Jesus had overcome the darkness through his death and resurrection, and then he sent forth messengers of his grace. God is doing the same thing today!

We might be inclined to think that Paul’s existence was of such significance and importance for what God called him to do, that the activity of God’s grace upon us could not be anything like God’s grace upon Paul. But we would be wrong to think that, as Paul wrote to Titus concerning the grace upon all of us through Jesus.  Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has shone upon all mankind.

Grace is the loving activity of God upon a human soul, and when we know that we can access this grace through our faith we realize that it is sufficient for each one of us to do what God has called us to do (we don’t have to feel it – just know it). Like Paul we are what we are by the grace of God, and we do what we do by the grace of God. It is grace that bring us home. God’s grace for Paul was waiting for him from before he was born, and he writes about this eternal aspect of grace in the Bible. Galatians 1:15 But he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles… You also find grace in the eyes of the Lord to live the life of truth and love that you were created to live in, even before you were born, and this new life involves allowing Jesus to be the number one player in a team called you.

Paul had seen himself as a religious man of great competence and great commitment to the cause of his Jewish tradition. He served God through his own strategy and ambition, and he took great pride in his own achievements. His competitive and committed human nature had created a power base that drove him to religious success in his own eyes and in the eyes of other zealous Jews. That was Paul’s former ‘I am what I am’ – his spiritual identity. But Paul’s religion did not put God’s love or mercy in his heart or a humble and surrendered will towards God in his soul, or a oneness with Jesus in the Spirit. He had to find that grace in the eyes of the Lord Jesus on his road to Damascus. There are multitudes of people who are committed to the cause of doing things for God that have a similar zeal and passion for success like Paul did and they live out of a misplaced spiritual identity like the Saul who had to become the Paul. They have yet to find the grace of God for whatever God has planned for them. 

That misplaced spiritual identity is working in the religious fervour in a multitude of ideologies in the world today with a superabundance of commitment to self-proclaimed noble causes and virtues that have nothing to do with a commitment to a loving relationship with the living God. The religious fervour of these ideologies has found a place in the power bases of society, in sport and in the corporate world, in politics and in the media, and in education of young children and university students. These power bases are capable of punishing through fear and intimidation any citizen who does not acknowledge the virtues of these ideologies. The ideologies revolve around intense perceptions of issues that have become extreme causes such as gender identity, climate theory, racial differences, Marxist philosophy and economics and other inflated issues. For example, eaxtreme climate ideologists predict doom for the planet in a few years if all nations do not pay their dues or offer the sacrifices required for us all to survive, and an entire generation of young people has an unhealthy fear that the world will end if we do not all comply, and fear is a powerful motivation.  There are unhealthy fears and there are also healthy fears regarding obvious dangers that we need to be warned about. God also uses fear to motivate people to change their ways, and it has its place in bringing lawless and ungodly people to their knees, but fear is not God’s first preference as a motivation even though the church has been using it throughout the centuries to get people to go to church and obey church tradition. The Gospel of grace is God’s first preference and that offers people God’s love and forgiveness and mercy and a way to live a grace filled life.  That grace can come upon anyone in any ideological powerbase and convert them sovereignly as seen in the life of Paul. That is the Lord’s doing and I pray we will see many such miracles in the days ahead.

The world today is beset with more ‘unlove’ and bitterness and rancour than ever before. The powers of darkness are hurling chaos and disorder and lawlessness into peoples’ hearts and bringing contention and division into every aspect of our culture. The Bible speaks of times like these regarding the kind of darkness that will exist on the earth in the end times. Nobody knows when the end times will fully come upon us, but the way things are today gives us some indication of what they will be like. Matthew 24:9 many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another, then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. Those things abound now in the days in which we live, and in amongst the violence and corruption the most ominous aspect of life today is ‘the love of many will grow cold’.

Jude writes urgently about how ungodly people should fear God’s judgement, but he especially urges us to live out our grace filled lives as his antidote to these lawless attitudes and behaviours.  Jude1:14. Dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ told you, that in the last times there would come these scoffers whose whole purpose in life is to enjoy themselves in every evil way imaginable. They stir up arguments; they love the evil things of the world; they do not have the Holy Spirit life.But you, dear friends, must build up your lives ever more strongly upon the foundation of our holy faith, learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. Stay always within the boundaries where God’s love can reach and bless you. Wait patiently for the eternal life that our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy and grace is going to give you. Try to help those who argue against you. Be merciful to those who doubt. Save some by fear, snatching them as from the very flames of hell itself, but as for others, help them to find the Lord by being gracious to them

Satan gave humanity a rule of destruction to live by – a deadly commandment if you will – that you hate one another as I have hated you, and we are living in times where there is much fear and hatred, but God’s love which casts out all fear is on the rise today through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us his new Commandment – that you love one another as I have loved you.   Paul tells us that it was God’s love that compelled his heart to serve him and to serve the people he was sent to. He writes Whatever we do, it is certainly not for our own gain but because Christ’s love compels us. (2Corinthians 5:14). Paul’s soul was bursting with that powerful love and he could hardly contain himself when he said, May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Paul lived within the intense yearning of God’s heart of love for him and that intense yearning of God’s heart is for us as well. That love is jealous for us which means that it wants the best for us and does not accept any harmful second best. That yearning wants to take anything out of the way in us that could stop us from responding to his love and stop us from spreading that love to others, as the Apostle James also writes, What do you think the Scripture means when it says that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, yearns jealously for us? But he gives us more and more grace to stand against all evil desires. (James 4:5)

Israel conquered the territory of Canaan to possess the wonderful blessings of the Promised Land. We have been given the territory of the hearts of men and women to conquer with God’s love. The activity of this love upon our hearts (God’s grace), is beginning to abound and it will continue to much more abound than the evil we see abounding in this dark world as we look forward to the moving of his Spirit in the earth. The Bible says that as we press on to know the Lord he will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth (Hosea 6:3). There are two kinds of rain spoken of here. One is a gentler rain (former rain) and the other is a stronger rain (latter rain). The first rain is the gentle rain of God’s loving grace that softens the hearts of men and women as they faithfully receive the understanding of God’s love. The other is the deluge of God’s sovereign outpouring of grace upon the earth which will come in due time and where people of all ages will be touched by God and suddenly transformed by his grace. Let us remain constant in prayer and compelled by God’s love that we might witness these things. 

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FINDING GRACE TO HELP

Hebrews 4:16 Let us then draw near with confidence (parresia) to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help (boētheia) in time of need (eukairos).

I believe that Scripture summarises the experience of the previous account of the Mountain of Transfiguration where I outlined the three stages of personal transformation (transfiguration). These stages were, climbing the mountain, being on the mountain, and coming down from the mountain.

What I’d like to share about today is ‘Finding grace to help’ which is the most significant aspect of stage two, about being on top of the mountain in the presence of God.

That Scripture starts off by encouraging us to ‘draw near with confidence to the throne of grace’, and that summarises the first stage of the process, of climbing up the mountain.

Our drawing near is the intention of our hearts to be closer to God. This happens as we climb and as we consider the issues of our daily life down below that are now going to be given to the Lord. We approach with confidence (parrēsia – frank and outspoken - the freedom of speech as from one citizen to another), being honest with the Lord about our doubts and fears and confusion about what to do or say in certain situations. We might question him by asking ‘why is this situation happening to me? Somehow, in one way or another we always get answers to questions like that, and they can be quite amusing. The Lord has a sense of humour and helps us to laugh at ourselves sometimes.

And all the while as we are climbing, we are ‘receiving mercy’. We would not dare draw near to him without knowing and believing that this mercy was available to us, and we would certainly not confidently discuss our weakness and failures and doubts and lack of faith in such an open and honest manner on the climb unless we were willing to receive this mercy.

On the climb we are anticipating reaching the ‘Throne of grace’, the place from where all the divine activity of God (which is what grace is) flows into the hearts of his human family in the earth. That is the mountain top where we will ‘find grace to help’.

God’s grace is always there for each one of us, and mostly we don’t know it.

That Is why we have to find it!

The Bible tells us that Noah ‘found grace’ in the eyes of the Lord’.

God told Moses that he had ‘found grace in his sight’

Being in God’s sight, or in the eyes the Lord means that those men knew that God was looking upon them, his countenance was shining upon them (countenance = face = presence). When something in our hearts tells us that God is mercifully and lovingly looking upon us, we know that we have FOUND GRACE! We are no longer self-conscious but God conscious, and that is GRACE (reflect upon that now).

We are simply experiencing God’s loving and powerful activity toward us as his children, and sometimes it comes to us by surprise - something happens in the core of our being that brings us closer to God. That is his sovereign grace. We could be empowered by his grace activity to soften our hearts and to surrender our will to him, or to ask him to change us and to create a clean heart within us. Sometimes it comes as an anointing of the Holy Spirit to bless and serve other people with a gift of grace from God. The Bible says that through Jesus we have access by faith into this grace where we can stand and rejoice in hope for the things God will do in our lives (Romans 5:2). We can ‘find grace’ at any time!

The Scripture goes on to says that we find grace ‘to help’. The word ‘help’ here does not simply mean to assist or to give aid in a general way. The word is boētheia and is of a very peculiar origin. It is defined as ‘a rope or chain for frapping a vessel’, and that entails the binding of four or five turns of a large cable or rope round a ship's hull when it is feared that the hull is not strong enough to resist the stormy sea.

The word boētheia occurs only twice in the Bible, here, and also in Acts 27:17.

Acts 27:14 But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s hull. After hoisting it up, they used ‘helps’ to undergird the ship. (boētheia - frapping)

I had never heard of the word ‘frap’ in my life before but now I’m finding that it could be one of the most transforming and transfiguring words I’ve ever stumbled upon.

Paul took this word ‘helps’ from his experience on a stormy sea as a prisoner being escorted by ship to Rome. From Rome he wrote his letter to the Hebrews, and he used this same word help (boētheia) that we find in our text.

Holding our soul together

He uses this word to describe what kind of protective holding together that the ship needed on a stormy sea and applies it to the activity of God’s grace in holding our soul together when we face the uncertainties of times of need in our lives.

Our souls are comprised of our mind and our emotions and our will, and these three parts need to work in unity with one another and be reordered when they look like flying apart - and that takes more than a self-help program to hold our soul together.

We might have our routine tasks organized and stay calm, but our minds could be wandering all over the place, or we can have thought things through clearly and doing what needs to be done but find that our emotions are in a state of anxiety for no reason. And there are times when we find ourselves wearied in soul to the point that our will no longer has strength and we need to find rest for our souls. What holds us together is the activity of the grace of God that reorders our confused mind through the Holy Spirit, and the same activity of grace brings peace to our heart from the throne of grace as we draw near to God, and the same grace brings our will into a place of yielding to the will of God when we cry out to him.

Words of Grace from Jesus

This gives meaning to our hearing the words of grace from Jesus that say to us ‘come to me when you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls’ (Matthew 11:28), and when we hear him say ‘my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you, so let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27

Grace seats itself first deep within our spirit and then it brings rest to our souls. That rest is not laziness or passivity but the soul’s relief from the nagging feeling of self-consciousness and the welcome enclosure of God consciousness.

Time of need - eukairos (the good moment)

Receiving mercy and finding grace are aspects of God’s love that are poured out in the provision of his protective help of holding us together. That provision arrives at the appropriate and appointed time. It is God’s eukairos – for the right time, the right moment, the right occasion. This grace that you have prayed for will hold your soul together (the frapping) at the time you ask for it, AND it will find you in a time of anticipated future challenge because you have prepared your heart of faith to receive it.

We can take hold of and embrace the activity of grace with all the energy within us, being grateful for having found grace in God’s grace filled world where he wraps us in his love. Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has shone upon all mankind.

Our rule of life

Finding grace becomes the rule of our lives and this amazing grace which is the powerful redemptive relationship between God and his human family merits our perseverance in faith and obedience. It is the discipline that makes the word disciple worthy of its description. We start each day with a time of finding grace in the loving gaze of the Lord, and then through the day we can have times of ‘recollection’ of this grace filled time of our souls being held together, that need only take a minute – twenty seconds of coming near and receiving mercy then twenty seconds of finding grace in his sight then twenty seconds of faith for the grace to help in the times of need ahead.

Grace has kept the church alive despite its being so much overlooked throughout the years, and in these days, God is holding it out to us to become the prize!

T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far And Grace will lead us home

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DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP

Mark 9:2 Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him up onto a mountaintop to pray. And as he was praying, he was transfigured before them, his face began to shine, and his clothes became dazzling white and blazed with light. Then two men appeared and began talking with him—Moses and Elijah! They were splendid in appearance, glorious to see; and they were speaking of his death at Jerusalem, to be carried out in accordance with God’s plan. As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave, Peter, all confused and not even knowing what he was saying, blurted out, “Master, this is wonderful! We’ll put up three tents —one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah!” But even as he was saying this, a bright cloud formed above them; and they were in awe as it covered them. And a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” Then, as the voice died away, Jesus was there alone with his disciples. He told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after his resurrection from the dead, but they did not understand what he meant.

The greatest show on earth The account of the transfiguration of Jesus on the top of a mountain depicts what could be called the most spectacular phenomenon to be described in the Bible. It was a time and a place where Heaven was seen to touch the earth, where Jesus shone in glory as a kind of preview of his glorified resurrected Heavenly self in the presence of the Heavenly forms of Moses and Elijah. The Heavenly Moses represented the Law and Commandments which speaks of God’s wisdom to his people, while the Heavenly prophet Elijah speaks of God’s word of purpose for his people. This was also an astonishing historical record of an event that confirms for all believers the truth of the word ‘Incarnation’ which means the joining of the Being of God with the being of humanity in the glorified person of Jesus Christ. To those standing by it affirmed that Jesus was from Heaven and that he was known by the prophet Elijah and by the lawgiver Moses as the one who was the destined Lord and King of Heaven and Earth. If ever any Jewish person were to take seriously this magnificent occurrence as an historical account of seeing Israel’s holy prophet Elijah and their revered Lawgiver Moses speaking with the glorified Jesus as their promised Messiah, they would fall on the ground and worship him as God. (And they all will in time!). Three gospels recount this story. Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:28.

The background story Just before going up the mountain Jesus had been teaching his disciples about his going to the cross and dying and being raised up again, which was difficult for them to receive, and he challenged them also about following him and that only by losing their lives would they save their lives – all difficult sayings. The final thing that he said in those teachings was a remarkable statement; ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power (Mark 9:1). The simple truth of that statement is that after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit the Kingdom Age was about to arrive on the earth, and then would begin the time for people to see the Kingdom of God and to live in its power. The Kingdom age of faith The Apostle Peter was one of those people who would not taste death till he had seen the age of the new Kingdom and to enter into it. He also writes about witnessing the mountaintop transfiguration in the Scriptures. 2Peter 1:10 For we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father, and the voice was spoken to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice spoken from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

That mountaintop reality was the portrayal of everything Israel was and had been concerning their spiritual history and now it was to become the vision of humanity’s spiritual future in living a here and now Kingdom of Heaven life on the earth. And we are now living in that Kingdom age of God and experiencing it through our faith. Luke writes an epilogue to the mountaintop event, when he shares in the next verse about what happened when they came down from the mountain.

Luke 9:37 The next day as they descended from the mountain, a huge crowd met him, and a man in the crowd called out to him, “Teacher, this boy here is my only son and a spirit has seized him… Luke is telling us that the next thing after the mountaintop experience was now the Kingdom work for Jesus to do on the ground, a life of getting in amongst the spiritual chaos and disorder of the world around him and bringing love and wholeness into the physical and emotional pain of the people. The same kind of Kingdom activity was waiting for the disciples to enter into, and the same kind of Kingdom activity is waiting for us to enter into as well.

The Jesus model of mountaintop prayer When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he modelled to them his way of exercising mountaintop prayer. That was always a place where Heaven touched earth in a very personal way, a time of inner transfiguration where the human heart of Jesus held the glory of God within himself.

Whenever Jesus went up onto a mountaintop to pray, he would mostly go alone, to be with his Father. That was the first of the three stages of his mountaintop prayer, climbing the mountain and leaving everything else behind. The second stage was being on the mountaintop in the presence of his Father. The third stage was coming back down the mountain and engaging with the challenges of life below.

Jesus said to them ‘follow me’, and he is also saying the same to us in his modelling of mountaintop prayer to us. The discipline of this personal devotional prayer is still a discipline that needs a willingness to attend to, but by following his guidelines this approach turns prayer into a rest and refuge for our souls rather than a struggle that wearies our souls.

The first stage of climbing the mountain is our willingness to take the trek towards the mountaintop while still carrying the struggles of earthly things to reach a higher place of being with God. It’s as though we have put all of our earthly burdens into a backpack that we are now going to lug up a mountain. And when we get to the top, we will place whatever we carried in our backpack into his hands as an act of surrender. Our minds will then be set upon him and not upon the problems. Colossians 3:2 set your minds on the things above and not on the things of the earth The more often our soul does that trek the easier it gets because we are exercising our souls into a more confident hope as we surrender those burdens to the Lord. We know that he hears our surrendered prayer, and we also know that he knows what is in our backpack before we even unload it onto him. It is the surrender that delights him, and it is the surrender that is our faith.

After placing all our cares upon him the second stage is completed by being on the mountaintop with the Heavenly Jesus as our brother and sharing time with our Father as his child. We now begin to have our souls transformed (metamorpho?? - transfiguration) by the power of the Holy Spirit as we sit and receive Kingdom of Heaven life from him. This is where the love and mercy of God captures our heart, and the wisdom of God orders our mind, and the purpose of God directs our way forward. This is where the Apostle Peter wanted to build three tabernacles for Jesus and Moses and Elijah and to stay there and not come back down, but there has to be a coming down from the mountaintop.

The third stage is coming down the mountain and finding faith to do the work of God in our simple everyday faithfulness to whatever task or whatever relational occasion will present itself. This is where we can allow his Heavenly life and love to bring words and deeds of meaning into the lives of those around us.

A recollection process If we start each day with a mountaintop time with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit, we can have times of ‘recollection’ of this grace filled time of rest and refuge for our souls throughout the day for short periods of time. We recommit our surrendered prayer, and in this way, we maintain the flow of his kingdom purpose within our hearts. (It need only take a minute – twenty seconds reviewing the backpack trek up the mountain, twenty seconds receiving transforming grace, and twenty seconds preparing to re-enter the busy world while carrying his presence instead of a backpack of problems). Things will happen around us in the will of God that we could never have organized to happen by our own planning. But who qualifies for this kind of privilege? When I asked myself that question, I found the answer was a simple prayer.

A Kingdom Prayer Dear Lord, I wish to see your Kingdom reality this day and to have entrance into your Kingdom activity. I believe I am qualified for this as I am an imperfect human being that you died for and rose again for and who is in constant need of your mercy. I delight to do your will O Lord but I need your help. I need the empowering grace of your Holy Spirit to do that. Thank you for hearing this prayer and attending to my cry at this very moment. I now surrender this day to you. Your Beloved Child xo (see you on the Mountain)

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IN GODS WILL IN HIS TIME

Ephesians 5:15 ‘See then that you walk not irresponsibly but diligently and wisely, redeeming the time, because we live in times of much corruption. Therefore, do not be thoughtless, but seek to understand what the will of the Lord is. (NKJ)

The word used for ‘will of The Lord’ is thelema - God’s heart to bless us by bringing us into his will for our life. The word for redeeming used here is exagoraz??; to rescue from loss, improve opportunity, to buy up or ransom; The word used for ‘time’ here is kairos – God’s appointed time, not chronos – Clock time.

There are times when God brings us to a place of surrendering our will to his so that we can become the person he has truly created us to be. These are times of change for us where there comes a break from our past way of seeing things and doing things, a change of thinking – metanoia - repentance. It is an ongoing experience. That is God redeeming the time for us in his appointed timing for a new beginning for us in his will for our journey in life.

Redeeming means that God is able to buy back and restore all that we have grieved over as being lost. He won’t bring the same things back, the same years with the same circumstances, or the same people and the same events, but he brings something new and something better. His redeeming power renews time that we think has been wasted, effort that has come to nothing, and hopes that have been dashed. God’s redemption buys back for us all his plans and purposes and gets us on track with his great desire for our blessing as his child. It means new and better opportunities and a new and better understanding of his will for us in all things - it always gets better. That is the ongoing ‘Behold I make all things new’ promise of Jesus.

When we become conscious that God is doing that reordering and redeeming work in our lives, that moment of redeemed time makes up for all lost time and places us in his will for an ‘all things new’ future. The apostle Paul made up for all the wasted time and effort of his evil persecution of Christians in one moment of time on the road to Damascus. But how could Paul know how to get into line with God’s design in God’s appointed time until he knew who he was meant to be? God had to tell Paul who he was (Acts 9:15 Ananias). Jesus told the disciple Ananias in a vision to tell Paul that he was a chosen vessel to carry God’s presence with him at all times, and what things he would suffer in his name in the doing of his will.

God also tells us who we really are by being joined in the one Spirit with Jesus to realise that we can occupy the same eternal time frame as he does, knowing he is with us wherever we go. This becomes a new way of living.

John 12:26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him. The above Scripture shows us that who we are meant to be, and where we are meant to be at any given time is being with Jesus and sharing in what he is doing. Jesus was the only person who did not need redeeming of the time because he knew who he was all the time and where he was and where he was going with the Father in his empowering grace. Whatever plans Jesus made as a person were surrendered into the will of the Father. Paul must have asked himself at times ‘Why am I in prison, why did I just get sick with a disease of the eyes, why did I get shipwrecked, beaten up, ignored and insulted? The answer is - that is where Jesus was, and you can be there where he is at any time in his grace.

We can become fixated with chronos time (everyday clock time), which focuses on what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. God is always in kairos time (God’s appointed times) and these are two different worlds of time that exist side by side. God is always drawing us out of our preoccupation with clock time and the pressures that it brings, like wasted time, lost time, not enough time, too late time. He is always drawing us out of there and inviting us into his Kairos appointed time.

An example of this occurs when the Holy Spirit prompts you to pray for someone and when you do you will be where Jesus is because he is also there with that person in their need (even if they don’t know it), and you are part of that ‘being there’ because that is where your prayer is going. God is blessed by this timing because at that moment, creatively arranged by God for you, your heart beats with his. The person you’re praying for is also blessed (in whatever way God may choose to bless them) and you are blessed because there is no greater meaning for you in that moment than in what you are doing. That moment releases you into God’s love and peace and joy and that moment brings about change for God’s will to be done.

We all want things to change for us and to change for the better. Many sincere people get swept up with the new ideas that roar through the world like a storm. They try harder with all the new ideas, new experiences, new challenges, and new pathways but life doesn’t bring the change that they want. Having new ideas is not the same as becoming a new person living within God’s idea of who we are. We are God’s vessels that carry his presence into where he is taking us. He accomplishes that purpose despite our going round in circles and getting distracted. However, when we are about doing our daily clock time routine and maybe think that our routine is separate from doing God’s will, we simply bring that chronos clock time into God’s Kairos appointed time and it becomes lifted into a place where we bring the Heavenly into the earthly things and we move forward with God.

Just let a person make this one discovery: The world cannot take us to where only God destined us to be. God moves forward with his overall plan for the world and he moves forward with his plan for our lives. There is an energy which directs us, moves us and carries us, even though we cannot see where it is taking us. That energy is the hidden power of the wind of the Spirit which blows where it wills. We cannot see our final destination but with this kind of faith we see through the present disorder of this world system which is under the tyranny of clock time, and we enter the parallel realm of eternal time, God’s Kairos time. God’s grace lifts us across the bridge from the world of fear-and-stress time to stillness-and-trust time. That is the redeeming of life and of time. We can only be amazed and grateful that all of us are being carried by this power and perhaps only regret that we are not carried by it more willingly, joyfully, and completely.

We can learn to practice being carried by the power of his grace and it need only take a minute of time where we consciously place ourselves in his time and in his presence. This does not have to be some rapturous feeling of his presence but a faithful acknowledgement of his nearness to us. The sense of God’s presence comes and goes in a way that I do not understand. Grace is grace - it is a gift. This practice of coming into his presence closes the door on the power of anxiety and negative emotions and opens the door to receiving God’s love and peace, and it allows for a gracious transformation of our souls.

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BEING IN GODS WILL 

Romans 12:2 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (dokimaz?? - test, discern, examine) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Today I will be discussing what it means to discern and test what is the good will of God, the acceptable will of God and the perfect will of God in our lives.  These are three measurable degrees of the will of God in the New Testament, but I will first outline the general principle of being in the will of God starting from the Old Testament.

God’s will (thelema) for our lives is God’s pathway of purpose and meaning for our lives that flows from his heart to our hearts on our journey of life with him. 

In the Old Testament Israel was sovereignly placed into God’s will by his choice! God took them on a journey under the leadership of Moses into the promised land of Canaan. He had rescued them from out of their slavery under the harsh rule of the Pharaohs in Egypt and He gave them the Commandments of the Law through Moses for them to know what his will was for them and to know his wisdom and to learn obedience. God took the nation of Israel to be his people whose way of life would glorify God by putting God on display to all those other nations.  He gave them priests that would offer the blood of animal sacrifices for the forgiveness of their sins and for them to know his mercy and he worked miracles of provision of food and supernaturally won battles for them against their enemies to show them his power and strength. And for about fifteen hundred years God also provided them with prophets and Kings to lead and guide them and to keep them in his will, but for all this they strayed from his path for them. There were corrupt prophets and evil kings and wicked priests who led them astray for the most part of that time as a nation. Their going astray can be summed up in one episode of disobedience and rebellion when he spoke to them through Isaiah.

Isaiah 30:1 Woe to my rebellious children, says the Lord; you ask advice from everyone but me and decide to do what I don’t want you to do. You yoke yourselves with unbelieving nations, thus piling up your sins. For without consulting me you have gone down to Egypt to find aid and have put your trust in Pharaoh for his protection. But you will be disappointed, humiliated and disgraced, for he can’t deliver on his promises to save you.

Despite their wilfulness they were still sovereignly in his will, but he had to warn them that their wilfulness was preventing them from receiving his saving power over them. Isaiah 30:15 For the Lord God says: Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength… He will answer you, and with your own eyes you will see your Teacher (yara – to flow like water). The teachers for them were the prophets and the priests. The Teacher for us is the Holy Spirit. And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you say, “this is the way; walk in it.” 

The only way that Israel could finally come into the perfect will of God for them was in the person of Jesus who walked in perfect harmony and oneness with his Father in spirit, soul, and body. Jesus said. Hebrews10.5 a body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, The New Testament reality for us is that we can be brought into God’s will through Jesus in our harmony and oneness with him. We who believe are now his body in the earth.

Israel’s consciousness of God’s will was the outward seeing of his works in action and the hearing of the words of the prophets. Our consciousness of God’s will is through the inner seeing by faith and the witness of the Holy Spirit and the renewing of our minds.  We can confidently live in an ever-present consciousness of being in his will. Being in God’s will is more about flowing with God rather than receiving direct dictates about things for which we have options and responsibilities, like what house we should or should not buy, or what job to accept. As far as getting a job is concerned it is sometimes a matter of taking what is available at the time. Titus 3:1 Be ready for any honest work… God’s will can flow in our life no matter what our options are, and we do not always have to get a text message from God that eliminates our responsibility.  We may even go down a blind alley at times, but God will always come down there with us and graciously bring us back again  Isaiah 30:15… He will be with you to teach you—with your own eyes you will see your Teacher (yara – to flow like water). And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you saying “this is the way; walk in it. As I mentioned earlier the ‘Teacher’ for us is the Holy Spirit as it says in one of my favourite Scriptures 1John 2:27 the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.   I want to now return to the text Scripture that we read at the beginning. Romans 12.1…Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (test) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Our bodies become actively engaged in the physical doing of his will, and our minds become renewed with a new consciousness of living in the will of God.  This Scripture also mentions three aspects of the doing of God’s will that can be tested or measured as to what sphere of God’s will we operate in at any one time. These are three degrees of the will of God, the good will of God, the acceptable will of God and the perfect will of God.  Paul was not just modelling a spiritual theory but was outlining a transformative process of being conformed to God’s likeness in the doing of his will in spirit, soul, and body.

The three degrees of doing the will of God 

The good will of God - agathos; of benefit, good, productive. We honour God by doing worthwhile and productive activities for ourselves and others, and God’s good things do not just happen, they are done on purpose, and we can begin each day with that purposeful attitude, knowing that God is with us in the doing of his will. The Bible says that Jesus went about doing good (Acts 10:38), and as he did, miracles happened. When we do the good will of God, other good things happen around us. Prayer and praising God and waiting on the Lord are all purposeful acts of doing good, and God responds to us in this by working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28).  There is also our doing good in simple faithful service to others, whether we know them or whether they are strangers, and where we recognise that whatever good work we do is being done as unto the Lord.   Just as sin and the selfish ego must be exposed to God’s light, so must the understanding of the will of God be brought into the light. This is God’s Kingdom reordering in this time. How do we test that the good will of God is happening in us? We need to consciously ask ourselves where God’s will is fitting in to our thinking and doing at any one time. We can remind ourselves that when we are doing good things for other people we are also doing them for God, and with God and unto God. 

The acceptable will of God - euarestos - well pleasing.  There are sacrificial things we can do for others that lift our doing good into a higher expression of relationships that bless and please the heart of God as well as other people.  Hebrews 13:16 Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have with those in need, for such sacrifices are well pleasing to him. Paul also mentions the giving of those in the church at Philippi towards the support of his ministry. Philippians 4:14 … No church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only. For even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once and again for my necessities. I have received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Sacrificial giving brings a multiplication of what is given. (Proverbs 11:24 Luke 6:38)

The perfect will of God - teleios; mature in growth of spiritual and character, complete. The Bible says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering. Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. This means that God’s will involves going through adverse circumstances and learning to accept them with thanksgiving, even when they involve receiving unjust treatment at the hands of others. When Jesus willingly went through the injustice of his suffering at the hands of those who persecuted him and insulted him there was a power of God released into the earth that brought us to God. 1Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. When we go through times of suffering and adversity and place ourselves trustingly in God’s hands there is a power released from heaven that draws people to God. We can be assured that the perfect work of Jesus is working through us by faith in these times and receive his joy in our hearts despite the suffering, and know we are being transformed. 

The highest state of consciousness that a human being can have is to know that they are in the will of God. Everything else has to make way for God’s will in his Kingdom even in the midst of chaos around us. We become part of the Lord’s prayer of ‘Thy Kingdom come; thy will be done’.  We can invite God at any time to search our hearts as David did in the Psalms and show us any wrong attitude we may have. Psalm 139:23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

Having this attitude gives us confidence to go forward in faith even when we aware of falling short because of our weaknesses and failures, and if everything gets too hard, we humbly cry out to Jesus and ask him to do it for us. That’s called obtaining mercy and finding grace (Hebrews 4:16). That kind of honest transparency brings forth our faith to do God’s will.

The right pathway is an attitude of trust as God steers us into his peace in our hearts. Having that kind of peace and that kind of trust and faith is what it means to be in his will. 

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THE EARLY CHURCH

The members of the early church still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish religion even though they now had a revelation of the life of Jesus within them through the work of the Holy Spirit. They went to the synagogue every Saturday like good churchgoers, but they could not celebrate their newness of life in the Spirit together in the formal structure and liturgy of the synagogue so they met in households where they could grow their new way of life together in an informal friendly way and in the freedom of the Spirit.                 Their style of celebrating this way of life is described in the Book of Acts.

Acts 2:42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. 

Apostles’ Doctrine. The early apostles spoke God’s word and trusted the Holy Spirit to teach each person how to hear from Jesus and how to live their life in partnership with him in a way that pleased the Father. That was the challenge that the apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers gave to each individual and to each group who gathered together in Jesus’ name, to build up their faith in their walk with God. This was something entirely new and scary because of the personal and individual freedom and responsibility that it brought but Jesus had said ‘I am the way the truth and the life’ and ‘no man can come to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6)

Fellowship Our fellowship (koinonia) is an ongoing conversation of sharing the blessing of the ‘Jesus within us’ life. The Community of Faith is us together heeding another person’s experience of Jesus, no matter how different that experience might be to ours. Paul wrote to the church in Rome commending them on their inner knowledge of Jesus and he was confident that they could speak comfort and wisdom into one another’s’ lives.   Romans 15:14 I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to put one another in mind of God’s Word.

Breaking of bread – Communion We sit ‘at table’ with one another and beak bread and drink the cup together. There doesn’t have to be an actual table – just people of faith remembering the bread as the body of Christ and the cup as his life-giving blood. That table is a place of the revelation of God to us of who he is and what he does. Abraham sat at table (??ulh?ân; a table - or spread out as a meal) and offered three loaves of bread to The Lord Adonai who revealed himself as God in the form of three angels. Genesis 18:2 He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, “O Lord, if I have found favour in your sight, do not pass by your servant… And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, ‘please quickly make three cakes of bread of fine flour!’ and he set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.  There he received the revelation from God that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. King David sat at table with the Lord (Psalm 23) and experienced total security even in the presence of his enemies and received a revelation of the living hope from God for the future comfort and fulfillment of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

The two disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus did not recognize who Jesus was until the Holy Spirit opened their eyes and revealed the risen Jesus to them, as they sat with him ‘at table’ (kataklin?? - recline at a meal) and they broke bread together. Luke 24:30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Holy Spirit still does this with us today ‘at table’ with the Lord and with one another.

Prayers Communion is a time to have prayer together ‘at table’. 1Timothy 2:1 First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and gracious in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth

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WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE

When Jesus was ministering in Galilee, he healed three blind men. One man was blind Bartimaeus Mark 10:46 And so they reached Jericho. Later, as they left town, a great crowd was following. Now it happened that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus was sitting beside the road as Jesus was going by. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus from Nazareth was near, he began to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When Jesus heard him, he stopped there in the road and said, “Tell him to come here.” So they called the blind man. “Be encouraged,” they said, “come on, he’s calling you!” Bartimaeus pulled off his old cloak and threw it aside, jumped up and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. The blind man said, “I want to see!” And Jesus said to him, “All right, it’s done. Your faith has healed you.” And instantly the blind man could see and followed Jesus down the road!

Another man who was healed from blindness was healed by Jesus putting spit in his eyes Mark 8:25. And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Another man healed from blindness by Jesus didn't have Jesus spit in his eye but rather Jesus spat on the ground and made mud. John 9:7 As he was walking along, he saw a man blind from birth. “Master,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?” “Neither,” Jesus answered. “But to demonstrate the power of God. Then he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smoothed the mud over the blind man’s eyes, and told him, “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. So the man went where he was sent and washed and came back seeing!

Now for some speculation - We can imagine how these wonderful faith healings would have been compared and examined closely by Bible teachers (back then and still today) to discover the deeper meanings behind these experiences of faith. This would probably have given rise to earnest truth seekers and perhaps a few opportunists to hold a conference to discuss which was the most effective and appealing teaching method for being healed from blindness. After that conference three new denominations could very well have been formed all in the name of Jesus. There would have been the Bartamites the Spittites and the Muddites.

The key to the Bartimite doctrine would be his throwing off the cloak before Jesus prayed. The historical context shows that this cloak that Bartimaeus was wearing was most likely an official begging coat for licenced beggars. This could begin a new method of faith that could develop into some kind of practice still seen today about say, treading on your glasses while waiting in a prayer line with the expectation of being healed of sight defects. I watched this happen to two of my colleagues many years ago when I was in ministry training college. My two friends stomped on their spectacles as they received prayer from a visiting evangelist, and they had to go to the optometrist a few days later and each get a new pair of glasses.

The Spittites. This doctrine would not only reveal truth concerning the spittle from Jesus’ mouth, which can speak of the living water of the Holy Spirit, but it would also introduce the new method of first praying, and then asking the person if they can see, and then laying on hands a second time to impart more faith for a better result.

The Muddites. The Muddite teaching emphasises that it was not only the living water of the spittle but it adds the method of mixing the spittle with the dust of the ground, which could speak of the Holy Spirit being joined to mankind. And furthermore, because the blind man had to wash in the pool of Siloam before he received his sight it could lead to the person being baptized into the local Muddite Assemblies church.

However, what these three men really had in common was that they had been blind and now they could see - and they had all encountered Jesus and the love of God. Christianity challenges each individual to meet with Jesus in his or her own situation. The moment we make an exclusive doctrine out of a method we can bring division to the body of Christ. We place something else above Jesus and God’s love to indulge our own self-interest and it is like a market place of ‘get in on the latest and the best doctrine’ deal on offer. (only love conquers indulgent self-interest). Self-interest is a perfectly normal and responsible attitude for a person to have, to survive, stay as healthy as possible and be productive enough to do all this and to care for others. But when self interest becomes a problem of anxiety or wilfulness and me me me, and the dodgy doctrine deals have not worked the answer is to know that you are loved by someone who always acts for your best interest because they love you. That is what the Holy Spirit imparts to our hearts concerning Jesus and the Father.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus about being loving and wise in the teaching and applying of the truth of God’s word in the church. Paul wanted them to become a community of faith and love that expressed God’s love and faith and power into their world.

Ephesians Chapter 4:11-16. And he appointed some to be apostles and some to be prophets and some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers of his word 12. Who would equip those who live for God to live a life of serving others (equip the saints for the work of the ministry) and be formed together for the expression of Jesus to the world. 13. Until we all come into the unity of the faith in the knowing of the Son of God, to become a complete person who measures up to having the fullness of Christ within us. 14. When this starts to happen, we won’t be like children tossed about in all directions and running here and there after every new alluring teaching from cunning teachers who load the dice to prosper their own ends and ambitions. 15. But when truth is proclaimed, and it is empowered by God’s love it causes us as a body to grow and develop in oneness and harmony with Christ who is the head of that body. 16. From this placement of the body with its head, which is Christ, comes the perfect collaboration of a completely balanced and effective body, as each part contributes the best it has in the best possible way so that the whole body becomes the expression of God’s love and power.

The early apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers were ministries appointed by God that were trying to transition people from religion with its rituals and regulations into depending upon Jesus in a spiritual relationship with him. They were talking to people from many different cultures and religions which all had written laws and rituals of some kind. These people had learned to feel more secure when they had ritual sacrifices and a ritual code of truth that specified exactly what method of application would get them some desired outcome or favour with God. That belief system was not faith in a living God, but faith in a methodology. Real faith is our believing in a living loving God who dwells within us working in our hearts to bring about his will in our lives as we surrender our needs and petitions to him. All those ministries I just mentioned spoke God’s word and trusted the Holy Spirit to teach each person how to hear from Jesus and how to live their life in partnership with him in a way that pleased the Father. This was something entirely new and scary because of the freedom that it brought. But Jesus had said ‘I am the way the truth and the life’ and ‘no man can come to the Father except through me’ and that was the challenge that the apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers gave to every individual, to build up their faith in their walk with God.

When Paul was knocked to the ground on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Jesus told Paul that he had chosen him to be his apostle to the Gentiles, or non-Jews. Paul had to bring the revelation of ‘Christ in you’ to unbelievers who had a multiplicity of views on religion and God and spirituality. Paul set about laying down what was the first goal of the Church, which was to come into the ‘unity of the faith’ – ‘Until we all come into the unity of the faith in the knowing of the Son of God, to become a complete person who measures up to having the fullness of Christ within us’ (Vs.13) The Community of Faith does not judge or criticize another person’s genuine experience of Jesus, no matter how different it might be. Our ongoing conversation can be sharing the blessing of the ‘Jesus within us’ life. Paul wrote to the church in Rome commending them on their inner knowledge of Jesus and he was confident that they could speak comfort and wisdom into one another’s’ lives. Romans 15:14 I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to put one another in mind of God’s Word. It is good for a local church gathering to have proven ministries in their midst that can encourage God’s people pastorally and prophetically and teach them in the counsel of God’s Word. And it is all about each one of us having a personal knowledge of Jesus being active in our lives. That kind of local church community is genuinely evangelical because the people live out the Gospel that speaks through their lives.

In the next verse (Vs.14) Paul warns us to not go after alluring teachings that promote methodologies for getting your prayers answered the way you want them to. All this does is bring about more division because people start focusing on the crafty methods to get their prayers answered rather than trust in the person of Jesus. The motivation behind these teachings/teachers is often human pride or ambition or financial gain and reputation. Many of these methods, styles and brands of faith have been exposed in the last few years of this century and there is a lot of soul-searching going on now as people are being challenged to live for God and not for themselves.

There are many people seeking truth with a genuine heart and conscience that are of other faiths and spiritual practices. There are many who may have a concept of a God who is out there or up there somewhere and they must not be rejected and judged. God will judge each person one day and he alone knows their heart and conscience and their destiny. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to actively pursue the hearts of all of these people, as he did to Paul and has done to all of us. But how sad it is that many seekers of truth see Christianity as divided and as worldly and as confused as any other religion. It does not have to be like that. We can be part of God’s drawing of people to himself as the one true God as we live in the ‘unity of the faith’ and allow Jesus to live out his life from within us. Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him about being part of this work of God.

1Timothy 2:1 The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Saviour God wants us to live. He wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth we've learned: that there's one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered his life in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free, the evidence of this coming at the appointed time. This and this only has been my appointed work (I tell the truth I am not lying).

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

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WISDOM FROM THE FATHER notes

God would walk with Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden every day and he would tell them about the wonderful creation that he had created for them. In this way he filled their hearts with knowledge about who he was and about who they were, in a perfect relationship with himself and with one another. And he told them how much they were loved. He didn’t have to teach them any rules or regulations that would instruct them in moral or ethical choices concerning their relationships to one another because that was perfect, therefore he did not have to instruct them in the relational wisdom of the Ten Commandants. He had only given them one commandment and that was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve disobeyed this critical commandment, and this permanently damaged their relationship with God and with one another. At that moment humanity gave entrance to the destructive forces of broken and disordered relationships. Darkness had simply tempted them to sin grievously against the greatest of all God’s values for his earthly family, that of loving and trusting relationships. They had failed to trust the one who was the source of everything concerning who they were and what was theirs. They and their descendants would from now on struggle with a damaged conscience concerning the difference between good and evil for many thousands of years. The heart of mankind was filled with a mistrust of God. Humanity had become separated in its mind from the knowledge of God and had begun to find other options to replace God with gods of its own choosing and its own making. People began ambitiously struggling to fashion their own identity and destiny and their soul found no rest in this separated state of mind. They also began to mistrust one another and to do one another violence and harm and to steal from each other and to lie to each other, and about one another.

In due time God spoke to another man called Moses on the top of a mountain and he gave him the solution to all of this relational damage and harm that people did to themselves. He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, which was God’s wisdom concerning how to heal and restore and strengthen relationships between God and mankind and between people with one another. These relationships would be lovingly defined and wisely regulated by a loving Father God. Moses would have the task of overseeing the instruction of the Commandments to God’s people Israel for forty years in their journey through the wilderness, after God had miraculously set them free from their four hundred year bondage of slavery in Egypt. The Ten Commandments were purely and simply the wisest and most straightforward external means that God could use to regulate what was most precious to him in the lives of his people in their community, and that is loving, joyful and fulfilling relationships with himself and one another. Everything else in life is secondary to this and grows out from this.

God also spoke intimately to a man named David, the king of Israel whom the Bible calls ‘a man after God’s own heart’. He was devoted to the wisdom of God that resided in the Commandments. David wrote powerfully in the psalms about his longing for the wisdom of God’s Commandments to transform his heart and soul. Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.

God’s personal loving intervention into the lives of his people Israel was the prelude and the curtain raiser for the way humanity was being prepared to receive God himself in human form in the person of Jesus who would personally reside within humanity and join us to himself forever. Jesus embodied the ultimate truth of his Father’s Commandments and there came to mankind through Jesus a new way for this perfect wisdom concerning relationships to be grafted into the very being of the human heart and to make that heart willing to relate lovingly to God as a Father, and to other people as Jesus did. Jesus also spoke of the Commandments as being the expression of this perfect loving relationship between God and his people and between people with each other. One day a religious lawyer asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment and Jesus replied. ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Jesus spoke life into his teaching of the commandments and turned his emphasis of them from ‘’you shall nots into ‘you shall be transformed’. The apostles then continued this New Testament emphasis of redeeming faith in their teaching on the Commandments. It was prophesied in the Old Testament that there would be new life-giving way of living the Commandments from a willing heart of faith through the loving work of Jesus. This prophetic word of Jeremiah was also recorded for us in the New Testament as being for all of humanity, not only for Israel.

Hebrews 8:10 ’For this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And no one will instruct his brother or teach his neighbour regarding knowing the Lord for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’

The following presentation of the Commandments from Commandment One through to Commandment Ten is a reading of the words of love and wisdom and entreaty that I believe our Father God would speak to us today. The first four Commandments deal with our relationship to God and the next six Commandments deal with our relationships with one another.

I will first read the Commandment from Scripture (Exodus Chapter 20) and then I will share the transformational aspect of each Commandment as I see it reflected in the Gospels and the New Testament Scriptures.

1. I am The Lord your God. You will have no other gods before me.

I alone as your loving God can give you a life that is worth living if you trust me and look to no other god. Depend fully upon me for wisdom and guidance in your life choices and for fulfillment in loving relationships. Even your demands for total independence from me or stubborn rejection of me do not make me go away or stop me from intervening in your lives.

1. You shall not make yourselves any idol nor image or ever bow or worship it in any way; for I, the Lord your God, am jealous of you.

Learn to accept that I give your life its true meaning, which is that you mean everything to me and I want to mean everything to you. I am jealous for you and that means I don’t want you to invent another self-conceived god instead of me. And don’t create some self-image – another identity that replaces the identity I have given you. I have created you in my image.

1. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Only put God’s name to something you know he am doing in you and through you. You will know you have truly done this when you receive his peace in your heart through surrendering it prayerfully in faith for his will to be done in the matter. It is futile to presumptuously use God’s name to promote your own projects. If you do this you must own it all and take all the consequences of your presumption. In the same way it is unethical to presume the use of other peoples’ names and reputations for your own advantage. God’s name has great authority and power and it reflects his very nature, so he desire that you learn to bear his name and allow people to see his nature come through in the things that you do in his name.

1. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

God worked on his creation for six days and rested on the seventh day. he took this rest so that he could enjoy that creation with his new family on the earth. So learn to take time out from your constant work to draw aside and give time to be with him and enjoy his company and the company of your family and friends whom you love. In that time of rest in his presence, you will receive faith that he is working with you and for you for his will to be done in your life. You will go out from that time of rest with peace in your heart giving thanks to him for his grace upon you and his provision for you.

These next six commandments deal with our relationships between one another.

1. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land

It is good and right for children to honour and obey their parents, despite the parents’ imperfections, and the Bible also says that parents should not provoke their children to frustration and anger (Ephesians 6:2). Parents can impart wisdom and understanding of life principles through good instruction and especially by good example and God will bless through a secure authority that serves but not one that is insecure and self-serving because self-serving authority is ultimately rebellion against God’s loving authority that serves his people. Under secure and caring authority children can then hopefully learn to respect and trust the authority that God has placed over them in other areas of life and become responsible and accountable in their decision making. They will in time become equipped to give others help and wisdom and guidance and will do well in life and people will trust in them and walk in the way of peace instead of in suspicion and anger. This can help them exercise caring and competent authority towards other people in their area of influence.

1. You shall not kill

No one likes to be around angry and suspicious people because anger and violence leads to killing relationships and that is what leads to killing other people. People can learn to accept others for who they are and build friendships with kindness and trust. They can gain control over emotional reactions and become a reconciler and be ready to forgive people when they don’t live up to expectations.

1. You shall not commit adultery

The strict definition of adultery is unlawful sexual activity in marriage. However, Jesus expanded this definition to include the inner attitude of the heart of wrong desire and not only the outward activity when he said ‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28). This lustful intent is simply self-gratification and is a form of unfaithfulness. We can be unfaithful at any level of committed relationships, whether it be towards God or in friendships or even in work relationships where we can be disloyal to our employer and not put in a faithful performance. That is also cheating. God’s love for us is a commitment of loving sacrifice and his love for us remains faithful even when we are unfaithful to him (2Timothy 2:3). He wants to reveal his loving faithfulness to us so that we can be drawn to him and drawn away from harmful self-gratifying habits and become free to become fulfilled in faithful relationships This is the pathway of return for many prodigal sons and daughters to the embrace of a loving Father where they learn the value of a loving relationship and are given worth.

1. You shall not steal

Stealing happens when a person loses sight of the worth of other people and what belongs to them, and in time they finally lose sight of their own worth as a person. God desires to touch the life of that person, to show them that they are of greater worth and value to him than all the other forms of creation and if he feeds the birds of the air and beautifies the flowers of the field how much more does he want to provide for them (Matthew 6:26). God wants to teach us all to value other people as he values them and to value what other people have worked honestly for. Paul writes ‘Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need Ephesians 4:28). This is how God transforms people from being takers to becoming appreciated as givers.

1. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

Satan is called 'a liar and the father of it' and the power that he wields starts with his own self-deception and ends with his deceiving of others. He told the first lie that was ever told on earth which led to the destruction of mankind’s relationship with God. He told them that God had deceived them by saying that they would die if they ate of the tree. Satan lied to them, telling them that they would not die and that they had been overlooked by God and deprived of his wisdom and spiritual and material provision. And all of that demonstrates the power of what is called false witness. That lie causes the devaluing of another person’s name and reputation and honour, which means demolishing their essential being and nature. The person who lies never has to change, because they never have to see themselves as they really are. God wants to show people who they really and lovingly persuade them that they do need to change 'You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free'. They become set free from destroying their world with the power of lies, and they become people who build their world with the power of truth and love.

1. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour

When a person covets another person’s identity or status or what they possess they live out the lie of taking the things of someone else’s’ life into the desolation and discontent of their own soul. They have forsaken God as being the source of their identity and blessing and fulfillment and replaced God with the identity or possessions or privileges of another person. They have created another god, a false idol, into whose image they want to be formed. It is only when they can let God mercifully show them the futility of living the wrong life with the wrong goals that will only frustrate and torment their souls, that they can graciously surrender to God’s passionate and determined good will for their lives. This opens up for them a courageous new horizon that they become drawn towards with the Heavenly energy of God’s loving grace and faith. ‘Behold I make all things new’. God can show that person the futility of living the wrong life pursuing imaginary goals and he gives them the grace to surrender that past pursuit and sets before them a courageous new horizon which gives them a future and a hope.

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SECRET PRAYER

Much of what Jesus taught his disciples had to do with being sincere and real. They had grown up under the influence of an external Jewish religion where there was an outward show of pretence in the prancing around of their religious observances, from giving to fasting and praying. Jesus wanted to teach them to become real in the inner faithfulness of their heart towards God, and not to be concerned with the praise of man. Matthew 6:1 “Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, for then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. … When you do a kindness to someone, do it secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

At this particular time of instruction Jesus was especially interested in telling them about the need for this inner quality of the heart in regard to prayer. Matthew 6:5 “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who pretend piety by praying publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. Truly, that is all the reward they will ever get. So go into your room and close door behind you and be with the Father in secret, and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out… for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus taught them to do as he did when he would leave the company of others and settle into a place of silent humble stillness where he would capture the truth of who he was in the presence of his loving Father. He would walk out from that place of prayer with a clear understanding of the will of his all-knowing Father. He taught his disciples his process of ‘secret prayer’. He had to close the door on the outer busyness of life and on the many human demands and challenges that acted upon his mind and emotions.

Jesus taught them how to close the door of their minds and emotions to their own outer troubling circumstances and to be with the Father in secret, where they would find his reward of peace and find faith to overcome the world in his strength. Jesus said to them. ‘follow me’, and he is also saying the same to us in these Scriptures, about how to follow him into his secret prayer life with his Father.

When Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray, he would not have had a room to go into, and there doesn’t have to be any formal room as such. The word for room (tameion) means an inner chamber. That inner chamber for Jesus was his heart, and that was where he met with his Father. That is also where we meet with our Father, in secret. When Jesus ‘closed the door behind him’ he was talking about shutting out the soul’s current burdens and perplexing challenges of life. Closing that door was a deliberate decision of his will. When Paul wrote about his ‘reaching forward to those things that are ahead’ (Philippians 3:13) he first of all talked about ‘forgetting those things that were behind’ That wasn’t about Paul having amnesia, it was as with Jesus a deliberate act of the will! Paul was very open in the Scriptures about the mental perplexities and the emotional disappointments he suffered, and he didn’t deny them or suppress them, but he also didn’t obsess about them. He knew the only faithful and intelligent way forward was to put them aside by closing the door of his soul on them while he let his mind occupy a better and more powerful place of the peace filled presence of God which is always there waiting to be occupied by all those who believe. He went on to say ‘…let any of us who think maturely act this way…’(Philippians 3:15)

There are three clearly defined parts to this orderly process of secret prayer that Jesus taught ‘Go into your room and close the door behind you…’ The first part, before going into the room, is to do some ordering of the soul concerning the scrambled array of competing burdens and concerns both past and present that can flood the human mind. We need to diligently check what those things are that we leave outside the door when we close it because they will still be there when we come out of that inner place of being heart to heart with God. And while the Father knows all these hidden things, we need to be clear about them too, so that we can finally surrender them willingly into his hands. This diligence takes a little time, but the Holy Spirit helps us by shining the light where it is needed.

‘Be with your Father in secret…’ The second part is to open the door of our heart to the flow of love and goodwill of the Father so that when we close the door on the past, he can reorder our soul and energize our heart with faith for the future. This is not a time of discussing our needs with God but purely a time of receiving the flow of his life into ours. That flow of life is the divine energy that created and ordered the Universe through the Logos of his Word, and that energy continues to work creatively upon us. During that time we can echo the words of David ‘My heart is fixed, my heart is ready (Psalm 57:7) as our faith expands in anticipation of God’s will being worked ‘in secret’ into our heart and into our circumstances.

‘…and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out for your Father knows what you need before you ask him’. The third part is to come out of that inner place and into our outer world knowing that our Father has ordered our future and prepared our heart with faith to discern his will for our life concerning those areas of our present circumstances. We now present these needs that the Holy Spirit gives us witness to, and that he wants us to willingly surrender to the Father. He gives us his faith that these things are being brought into the perfect will of God, and that faith and peace is the reward of the Father. The Bible says that Jesus lives forever to intercede to God on our behalf (Hebrews 7:5). We have surrendered these to the Father and we know Jesus ‘has our back’, as it were. We then give thanks for this and allow his peace to fill our hearts as we go out from there and into the activities of our lives. And now we are assured that we will see in his time what he has done and give more thanks, when our faith becomes our sight. Jesus went on to give them a general outline of how they could speak personally and openly to God, both in reverend awe of his greatness but also in the warmth and consolation of his love and goodness. He taught them what we call ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (Matthew 6: 8)

Dear Heavenly Father I respect and honour you as God over all things. I regard your Heavenly Kingdom order as being perfect in every way and I ask that you bring that perfect order more and more into this world so that your will can be done by us here on earth as you devise your perfect will for us from Heaven. I depend upon you for everything that I have in this earth that sustains my life and keeps me going. Help me to live in the peace of your forgiveness and to show that same forgiveness to others who have done me wrong. Please keep your hedge of protection from evil around me and my loved ones and strengthen our souls against being tempted and drawn away from your path by wrong desires. May the power of your Heavenly Kingdom be gloriously on display for all to see in this age and for all the ages to come. Amen

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SIN AND FAITH AND MISSING THE MARK

Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to come to his home for lunch and Jesus accepted the invitation. As they sat down to eat, a woman of the streets heard he was there and brought an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume. Going in, she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping, with her tears falling down upon his feet; and she wiped them off with her hair and kissed them and poured the perfume on them. When Jesus' host, a Pharisee, saw what was happening and who the woman was, he said to himself, “This proves that Jesus is no prophet, for if God had really sent him, he would know what kind of woman this one is!"

The Pharisees judged the woman harshly and they also judged Jesus harshly in this situation. This was bad press for Jesus – ‘Immoral sinful woman publicly kisses the feet of Jesus at a party

Then Jesus spoke up and answered his thoughts. "Simon," he said to the Pharisee, "I have something to say to you." "All right, Teacher," Simon replied, "go ahead." Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people--$5,000 to one and $500 to the other. But neither of them could pay him back, so he kindly forgave them both, letting them keep the money! Which do you suppose loved him most after that?" "I suppose the one who had owed him the most, “Simon answered. "Correct, “Jesus agreed. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look! See this woman kneeling here! When I entered your home, you didn't bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. Therefore her sins--and they are many--are forgiven, so she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love." And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven. “Then the men at the table said to themselves, “Who does this man think he is, going around forgiving sins?" And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Jesus described the beautiful logic of a person who owed much greatly appreciated being forgiven much. She loved Jesus in return for this forgiveness and she publicly demonstrated her love to him. Jesus compares her love and honour for him with the neglect he received from the owner of the house.

The woman was a sinner (harmaton - one who misses the mark) and she was forgiven for all her sins, which were many. Sin (harmatia - missing the mark) means disobeying The Commandments and religious rules in the Old Testament. The men at the table had said “Who does this man think he is, going around forgiving sins?" And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

In that one final sentence Jesus prophetically declared the difference between missing the mark or target in the Old Testament and missing the mark or target in the New Testament. She was being judged by people of missing the mark according to the Old Testament but she was responding by faith in Jesus and hitting the target according to the New Testament, which had not yet come into effect!

The mark to be missed in the Old Testament of being judged by the Commandments had been met fully by Jesus whom the Bible tells us was without sin. Jesus took his sinless life through the cross and was killed even though death had no claim on him according to the Scriptural law of sin and death Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, so death came upon all men because all sinned… He then rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven and then sent the Holy Spirit upon humanity. Then there came a new way that sin was to occur with a new kind of mark to be missed. The New Testament mark to aim for was of belief in the fact that we have received the gift of the sinless life from Jesus’ death and resurrection and can now live in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This is why Jesus said very clearly John 16:7…if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit (paracletos) will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin … because they do not believe in me. So the new definition for sin that the Holy Spirit is constantly convicting the hearts of all people about today is unbelief in the indwelling life of Jesus. God wants that life of his to be expressed through us. The Bible says ‘the just shall live by faith’(Galatians 3.11. Romans 1:17)

There are other words in the original language in the New Testament Scriptures used for deliberately disobeying God that occur a few times only, such as lawlessness and transgression, but the one and only word for sin as missing the mark , hamartia, is used over two hundred and fifty times as in the above Scriptures and elsewhere throughout the New Testament Bible. Missing the mark, or sin in the Old Testament is hata – turning from the path or missing the mark. That was a much easier target to see and to judge in the Old Testament because it was the observable outward behaviour concerning the Jewish rules and the Ten Commandments. There were many sinful acts of behaviour to be observed such as idolatry, anger, violence and killing, sexual immorality and unfaithfulness, stealing, lying, coveting and these were judged by man and by God. The mark that we miss in the New Testament is an inner hidden quality of the heart of faith that only God can judge.

The overarching fact is that God still requires that we obey his Commandments. Matthew 5:17… Jesus said… ‘I come not to destroy the law but to establish it’. How do we fulfill God’s requirement of us to obey his Commandments? Paul writes that our heart of believing in the life of Jesus within us is the only way that we can please God and willingly desire to obey his Commandments. This is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us giving us the same desire as Jesus had to do the will of his Father. This is God’s gift of grace to us. Romans 8.4 the righteous requirement of the law might now be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to our human nature but according to the Spirit. So that the right living that the law commanded could now flow freely from us who live a shared life together with Jesus in his divinity instead of a life isolated and limited by its own flawed condition.

Why would someone miss the mark (sin -hamartia) under this New Covenant of grace? A person would miss it if they were totally ignorant of any knowledge of God and his covenant. They would miss it if they worshipped other gods. They would miss it if they were not interested in God. They could also miss the mark if they had been told incorrectly that it was about rules and Commandments and outward observance rather than about being about grace and faith and an inner commitment of the heart of faith. These errors of understanding remain and abound today.

This new understanding took time to transition out of the religious mindset of the Jewish apostles who thought it was still a matter of being under the Law of the Commandments and the Jewish religious rules, while still passionately believing that Jesus Christ was God and that he died for the forgiveness of our sins. Those early apostles were taught by the Holy Spirit how to receive the revelation of this New Covenant and through those struggles of faith they came to understand that they could preach the full Gospel of grace and faith to the Gentiles also.

The apostle Peter was told to preach the good news to a Gentile centurion called Cornelius and he resisted that command from God at first because it broke the Jewish Laws of entering the home of a Gentile, not to mention the eating of Gentile food which was sinful and unclean for a Jew (even a Christian Jew, according to Peter). Peter did as he was told and he was amazed to see the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit revealing Jesus to them and filling them with his divine life. Peter later describes to the other apostles the supernatural work of God upon the hearts of the Gentiles Acts 11:15 ‘If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? God has granted repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles also. Peter went on to say ‘And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:9).

It was finally Paul who unfolded the truth of the universal grace of God through Jesus Christ. Universal grace means that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind and that all are forgiven. And we saw that the apostle John writes that the Holy Spirit is at work in ‘the World’, not just in ‘the Church’, and that means every human heart. Paul also states ‘For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of those who believe. (1Timothy 4:10).

That is not ‘universalism’ because the question remains – how many people believe what God wants them to believe? Many who call themselves Christians today may be unaware of what ‘sin’ is and unaware of what the mark is that they are supposed to aim at, namely, a full commitment to living as a partaker in their inner life of the divine Spirit of Christ.

I have to seriously ask myself that question every waking hour of my life. Do I believe? All I can say is “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

It is easy to look at peoples’ behaviour in the outside world and legalistically judge them as ‘sinners’, but Paul warns us against doing that; ‘For what have I to do with judging outsiders (1Corinthians 5:12). So who gives account to Who and who gives account to what? In the Old Testament God’s people were accountable to God and UNDER the Law, so they were accountable to the Law and judged by the Law. In the New Testament we are ALL accountable to God and UNDER grace, so we will each give account to God about receiving his grace that works by faith. 2Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you ……………………………

1Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of each one’s heart. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

The Church has become more occupied with judging one another than with loving one another. God might say to someone on that day – look your doctrine was too pushy and legalistic and brought condemnation however I loved your heart of sincerity to do your best for my Kingdom or yours was too pushy and self-serving and promised healing and prosperity on demand and brought confusion – however I loved your heart of generosity to do your best for my Kingdom. Or he might say ‘you felt so bad about yourself that you kept giving up and running away and doing yourself more harm than good, but I Ioved your humble heart of transparency’ give me a hug. PLUS TEN OTHER SCANARIOS - And then he might say – come on all of you and give one another a hug and stop arguing about how everybody missed the mark and by how much they missed it.

Romans 14:7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.

So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in that manner is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding…

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts condemns himself if it is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin – misses the mark... Faith is surrendering your spiritual agenda into the heart and hands of God who alone can bring about the supernatural outcomes. Paul nonetheless sets that mark as the highest goal of life – the upward call/invitation of God. He is saying that if you don’t have faith in this grace that works in you through the Holy Spirit then you are missing the mark one way or another. Paul admits his own struggle. Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have fully made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward that mark which is God’s Heavenly invitation to us all.

It is God’s great love that draws us towards himself by the Holy Spirit to respond to his invitation to reach this mark because our being with him is the highest mark that he desires for us to reach. He knows that is what will fulfil our heart’s desire because that is what fulfills his heart’s desire. And his great love is matched by his great mercy as he sees us stumbling forward. He sees our imperfect efforts, but when he also sees a perfect heart of intent that is what blesses him – and us. There are barriers in our human thinking that prevent this truth of grace from becoming established in our hearts. One barrier is that we can feel that we are too insignificant or unworthy to receive this kind of gracious love from God. That could be the greatest barrier of all because it seems like such a paradox that such an Almighty Holy God would be interested in such flawed human beings like us. The Bible shows that thinking like that is a lie. Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to bring to life the spirit of the lowly, and to bring to life the heart of the contrite ones.

Even with the highest intention of our heart of faith we can still get disappointed in our falling short of fully believing and trusting in this gift of grace. We find ourselves saying with Paul ‘the good that I want to do I do not, and the bad things I do not want to do I do’. But Paul knew that the Spirit of the life of Christ within would always lift him above the limits of his frail and feeble human nature if he pressed towards the mark and didn’t give up. When we do that we are exercising the greatest kind of faith and love towards God that exists, just like the woman who kissed the feet of Jesus.

The only way we can truly appreciate and give thanks to our God who is in the highest place, is to know him as the one who loves us in our lowly place and that is in fact the most perfect place. We need never be ashamed of our place of lowliness because that is where he wants to dwell with us. This is the glory of the cross and the resurrection. We can now truly sing ‘Amazing Grace who saved a wretch like me’.

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ASCENSION

After Jesus descended into Hades and paradise with the keys of hell and death the Bible says he set the captives free and led them into the Heavens (Ephesians 4:8). On his upward journey he visited the earth and took upon himself his entombed body and met Mary Magdalene in the garden near the tomb and told her he had to present himself to his Father in Heaven. The angels at the tomb had told Mary and the other women to tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them later in the day at Galilee. When he had finished making the presentation of his blood to his Father for the purification of the sins of the whole earth, he returned to the earth that same day same day in a resurrected body that could never ever die again. This resurrected body was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body. In this spiritual yet natural body Jesus could appear anywhere and at any time. He could feel and be touched, he could breathe and eat, and walk and talk, all of which he did when he resumed his earthly visit.

Upon his arrival back on earth he set off walking from Jerusalem in the direction of Galilee, where he had said he would meet with his disciples, and it was then that he saw two disciples walking together up ahead of him in serious discussion and he recognized them. The Bible says. He appeared to two disciples in another form (heteros morphe – an altered form or nature) as they walked and went into the country (Mark 16:9).

These were men who had been among the many disciples who would come to listen to him and ask questions. He began to make up ground on them because he wanted to talk to them, and as he gradually closed in on them, he mused upon his first impressions of his return to this familiar territory. He was struck again by the bewilderment and confusion in this world of uncertainty that people cling to so fervently as he heard snippets of conversation in Jerusalem concerning the last three days. He heard that the temple priests had fabricated a story that his body had been stolen by the disciples and that they had overcome the temple guards and raided the tomb. He also heard that his disciples were still doubting that he had risen from the dead, even though some of them had come to the tomb and seen it empty, and some women had spoken to the angels.

He finally caught up with the men and greeted them and joined them as they walked, but Holy Spirit had supernaturally veiled their eyes from recognizing him. He quietly listened as they spoke and detected the same mood of bewilderment, if not depression, that seemed to be hanging over everybody. He politely commented that they seemed to be bothered about something that was going on locally, and he asked what that might be. The one called Cleopas gave Jesus a puzzled look and said to Jesus that he must be the only visitor in Jerusalem that hadn’t heard about what had happened. So when Jesus asked Cleopas to spell out what he meant the other man began to patiently explain about the man called Jesus, a great man whom they had both followed and believed in. He enthusiastically recounted some of the miracles he had worked, and that he was a prophet, the greatest of them all. Cleopas broke in and added that Jesus stood up for justice, and taught them about God. They thought he was going to turn the world upside down and make everything new for them. Jesus pushed them further for more details and they said they had expected that there would be freedom and prosperity for the Jews for a start.

There was a pause, then one of them gave a sigh and told Jesus how the temple priests had convicted Jesus as a criminal and how he was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and that today was the third day since these things happened. When Jesus asked them to explain the significance of the third day the two men looked at one another awkwardly and one of them shrugged and said that the man Jesus had said he would rise from the dead after three days. Cleopas took up the story again and explained that some of the women even went to the tomb and found it empty and reported they saw two angels who said he was alive, and that some of his very own disciples also went to the tomb and found it empty. He too shrugged as he finished talking.

Jesus nodded and remained silent for a few paces as he walked alongside the two men. He then very pointedly asked them why on earth they didn’t just believe what they had been told by Jesus himself. The other man a little impatiently, replied that they hadn't seen anything, so what were they expected to believe? It was then that Jesus declared to them that the time was coming when they would believe even though they didn’t see. He then began to speak about all the Scriptures concerning himself. He spoke in detail of the Plan of Father to send The Son into the world. He taught them from the words of Scripture about prophesies which outlined the details of his birth, and his life and death, and his resurrection. Something happened in their hearts as they listened to him, and the time flew by, and the next thing they knew they were close to Emmaus, which was their destination.

They didn't want Jesus to stop talking so they appealed to him to stay with them, even though he told them he was going further. They asked him to at least stay and have a meal, so Jesus accepted their offer. During the meal Jesus took some bread, and gave thanks for it, and as he broke the bread their eyes were opened and immediately they recognized who he was. This was the ordinary, extraordinary moment, sitting at a table, life happening, very natural yet very spiritual, eye to eye heart to heart. Jesus heard Father speaking to him from heaven, telling him that this was the way it was going to be. Holy Spirit would be the one who would open their eyes to see him and know him as he really was, and that was the way The Plan would be implemented from heaven to earth. Jesus then heard Holy Spirit whisper to him; “People will speak the truth about you, and I will reveal you to them.” The next moment Jesus vanished from their sight

After Jesus vanished from their sight the two men decided to go back into Jerusalem and find the disciples who were in hiding, afraid of what was going to happen to them because of the rumors that were going about that they had stolen Jesus’ body. They found them and were whisked inside, and the doors were locked behind them. They told them of their journey with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and their miraculous meal with him where he had suddenly vanished. The disciples were ecstatic that Jesus was back from the dead, and while they were still talking Jesus appeared in their midst while the doors remained locked. The disciples panicked, and thought they were seeing a ghost, but Jesus explained to them that he was not a ghost because a ghost didn’t have bones and flesh, and he asked them to touch his hands and his feet and to see for themselves. Jesus stretched forth his hands and his peace hit their hearts. He breathed his Spirit upon them and they received the impartation of his peace. They immediately felt at one with Jesus and with each other. But this was just a mere foretaste of what was to come, as it would only be after his final ascension and being seated at the right hand of Father that Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell within them. On the day of Pentecost Holy Spirit would be sent from Father and from himself upon all humanity.

He could still see their bewilderment, and he knew he had to convince them in some ordinary way that he was real and alive again. So he asked them if he could have something to eat. James scurried to the fire and brought back some steamed fish, and some honeycomb, and held the mixed platter out at arm's length as Jesus accepted it and ate it with gusto. He looked around the room and noticed that Thomas was not amongst them. He asked them why they didn't go to Galilee where he said he would be going to meet them. They shuffled about without giving an answer, and Jesus told them he would see them in a few days at Galilee, and he vanished once more.

The disciples gathered at Galilee where Jesus had said he would meet them. Peter had been waiting with the others and had then become restless and asked James and John to come fishing with him to get some food for Jesus to eat. While the three were out fishing Jesus suddenly appeared to the others as they sat patiently, waiting for his arrival. When Thomas saw Jesus appear he walked hesitatingly towards him and stopped in front of him. Jesus knew that Thomas had not believed that he had risen, even after the other disciples had said that they had seen him. Jesus held out his hands towards Thomas and told him to touch his hands where the nails had pierced, and to touch his side where the Centurion’s lance had entered his side. Thomas broke down and wept and told Jesus that he believed. Jesus gently acknowledged his faith, that in seeing and touching he now believed. He went on to tell Thomas that there would be many who will believe without even seeing him and that they would be greatly blessed for that kind of faith. Jesus comforted him and he left them before Peter and James and John had returned. Jesus was to meet with many others during that forty days visit.

Jesus appeared to the disciples again one morning after seven of them had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. He stood on the shore and watched them fishing but they didn't realize that it was him. He shouted out to the fishermen from the shore, asking them if they had yet caught anything. A disgruntled ‘No’ came from Peter to this expert on the seashore, who responded to Peter by telling him to cast his net on the other side of the boat. Peter was about to explode when he heard John cry out that the expert on the seashore was indeed Jesus, The Lord. Peter then yelled to the others to do what Jesus had said. So they threw the nets to the other side and began to pull so many fish into the boat that they could hardly keep the boat afloat. But by this time Peter had plunged into the sea, swimming for all his might to get to his friend on the seashore, leaving the crew on the boat to work together on the haul. When Peter lurched his way up onto the shore he headed straight for Jesus and collapsed in front of him. He saw that Jesus had already prepared a fire with burning coals and had fish and toasted bread ready for them to eat. He didn't ask Jesus how he got the fish. Jesus reached down and helped Peter into a sitting position and told him to go and get some more fish from the catch so they could make breakfast for the others.

After they had all enjoyed breakfast together Jesus called Peter aside. He knew there were things that had to be said between them. Peter’s soul was in a turmoil of regrets, shame and guilt. Time and again he had asked himself why he didn’t stand up for Jesus instead of disowning him three times when he was asked if he knew him, and could that have made a difference? He had remembered when the rooster crowed that Jesus had predicted that he would do just that. What was Jesus going to say to him now – would Jesus disown him, even rebuke him three times? But Jesus asked Peter three times, in three different ways whether or not Peter loved him. The love of Jesus owned Peter, and Peter passionately gave himself up to the ownership of God’s love. As a true representation of a flawed humanity owned by God’s love, Peter was mercifully forgiven and accepted. It was also this moment that owned him, not the past, or the uncertainty of the future. This would also continue to be his greatest gift to God, the giving of each moment to Jesus. After having his spirit and soul fed with these words of love from Jesus, Peter was commissioned three times by Jesus to feed God’s lambs and feed his sheep. As Peter would go on in life, he would face his many imperfections, and he would learn to return to each present moment, as in that special moment, where he could surrender to the ownership of love, shed his fears, and grow in faith as a partaker of the nature of God.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus met with hundreds of people over those forty days (1Corinthians 15:7) and he worked many supernatural signs to prove he was indeed risen from the dead. He shared with them that the heart of the Father had always been to have a family of sons and daughters and to share his love with them - the same way that Father had shared his love with Jesus himself. Satan had tried to block this Plan from the beginning of time by blinding the mind of humanity with darkness, causing a chasm of separation from the living God to exist in their minds and to devise independence in their souls. But Jesus had overpowered darkness and Holy Spirit would come to them and bring them the power of the life that he now lived. He told them he would join their lives to his risen life for them to become one in Spirit with him. Holy Spirit would place Father’s love, and his own words in the hearts of men and women as a deep consciousness of indwelling abiding life. He told them they would together be as his Body in the World, and each gifted with grace and faith from Heaven. People and things that happened around them would change, as they themselves became more and more changed into being more like him.

He finally gathered the eleven disciples together and gave them teaching concerning the Kingdom of God because there remained still a glimmer of hope in many of them that very soon he would establish Israel as a political and sovereign nation in the earth. He explained that the timing of Israel’s future Kingdom status in the earth was in the command of the Father, and that those times were not for them to know. He made it clear that this present earthly mission did not include a national political agenda, but it was to create an inner spiritual Kingdom which he would rule over from Heaven. He said that when the Holy Spirit had come upon them, they would receive power to testify about his death and resurrection with great force to the people in Jerusalem, and throughout Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Then Jesus led them out along the road to Bethany, and when they reached the Mount of Olives, he told them not to leave Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them in fulfillment of the Father’s promise, a matter he had previously discussed with them. “John baptized you with water,” he reminded them, “but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit in just a few days time.

A dazzling light shone within a billowing white cloud above them. Jesus turned to them all and raised his hands in blessing. He did not need to say goodbye. As he began to rise slowly heavenwards he was enveloped in the cloud, and as they stood together looking into the cloud that had taken him they saw the shining figures of the two angels standing to one side, one of whom told them that the same cloud that they saw taking Jesus into eternity would also bring him back one day in total glory and triumph. The Plan will have been fulfilled.

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When Jesus gave up his Spirit to his Father he then descended in his Spirit on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades. Jesus had spoken about these places when he told the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar. The rich man who lived sumptuously in arrogant self-indulgence all of his life ended up in Hades and Lazarus who lived the life of a humble beggar at the gate of the rich man’s house ended up in Paradise, with Abraham. (Luke 16:19)

Jesus had now descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience. They were locked away from eternity till Jesus would now come to get them. Jesus would also visit Hades the prison of lost hope.

The bible says that Jesus then preached to all those prisoners of time the message of the Gospel, the plan of Father to send Jesus into the world to set people free from the captivity of sin and to bring his New Creation life to humanity. Jesus would have sat with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and many others in Paradise as well as his newfound friend that hung next to him on the cross and to whom he said ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’! He spoke to them and with them and he rested with them. He was to wait there until the end of the third day. This mission of setting those people in paradise free was one of setting them free from the captivity of time, as they had waited as captives till heaven came to get them. Many listened and heard this message of freedom at this time. Jesus also declared his work of salvation to those in Hades who had resisted God and refused to listen to him, including those who were destroyed in the flood of Noah. The Scriptures speak of this moment about Jesus. 1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them-- spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark. Jesus would wait there until the end of the third day.

John writes in the book of Revelation about the declaration of Jesus having received the keys of ‘Hell and death’ after his resurrection Revelation1:17,18 Fear not; I am the first and the last: -- I am he that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death. With one of the keys darkness would one day be locked away and set aside for another encounter with God, reserved for an appointed day at the end of time. With the other key he would now unlock the prisoners of the past from their patient pause and take them into an eternal heaven.

When Jesus turned the key of freedom in the prison gate a tremor hit the universe. Power from Father and Holy Spirit in heaven was released into and through Jesus to overcome death and the grave that changed the nature of every atom of matter in existence. God had joined himself to his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ. Our creator Jesus who made everything in heaven and earth, both in the spirit world and in the material world brought together all things into oneness with himself, to be upheld by the Word of the ‘power of his resurrection’. Colossians 1:16 He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to bring all things into a state of harmony with himself, whether on earth or in heaven, bringing them into unity with himself by the blood of his cross.

Prior to this moment all created being was separate to the ‘uncreated Being’ of God. Jesus, who was both created being and uncreated being, had by his death and resurrection now set the stage for humanity to become a ‘New Creation Being’, one in Spirit with The Lord.

On the third day the time came for them to leave, and Jesus led them on a triumphant upward journey, to their new home, his home. The entire company was escorted by Michael and Gabriel and the hosts of angels around them, as they ascended ever upwards until they reached the earth, from where they, and Jesus most recently, had come – from the grave to the sky. There they all stopped for a brief period of time, because there were things for Jesus to do there. The first thing that he had to do was to go to his tomb where his earthly body lay in its shroud. Michael and Gabriel flew before Jesus to the tomb and found the guards there that the temple priests had appointed to stand watch at the tomb. As the angels alighted the ground shook and the massive stone rolled away as a huge burst of lightning hit the place sending the guards reeling headlong to the ground. They leapt up in fright and bolted. Jesus entered his tomb and united himself again to the wounded shell of his body, leaving the headpiece and shroud lying separated from one another in the tomb (John 20:7).

Michael and Gabriel waited inside the tomb while Jesus walked bodily from the temporary resting place, out into the garden. He walked about, recalling vividly the events that had so recently taken place nearby. He remembered his time of kneeling in an agony of prayer when he accepted his cup of unbearable suffering.

At that same time some women had prepared oils and spices to anoint the body of Jesus. On their way to the tomb, they were discussing the problem of how to move the huge stone that covered the entrance. When they arrived, they were astonished to see that it had been moved and the guards were nowhere to be seen. They peered inside the tomb and were met by the majestic appearance of Michael and Gabriel, sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

” Are you looking for Jesus? Gabriel said. He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.”

The women ran to tell the disciples but one of them dropped behind and walked slowly through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. This was Mary Magdalene. And he called her by her name and said, “It’s alright Mary, it's me, it really is.”

She ran towards him, but he held up his hand and said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.’(John 20.27)

Jesus made it clear that his immediate mission was to complete the work of purification for sin through blood sacrifice that had occurred for the last one and a half thousand years. Every year on the Day of Atonement the High Priest had sprinkled the blood of animal sacrifice over the mercy seat seven times, in the most holy place, for all of Israel to be ceremoniously cleansed from their sins. The phrase ‘seven times’ in the Bible is always prophetic of the completion and finality of God’s work of salvation in the earth. Jesus had just sprinkled his blood at Golgotha for the forgiveness of the sins of the whole earth for all time. An end had been made of blood sacrifice, and now Jesus had to fulfill the offering of his blood to his Father in Heaven, as the Scripture declares. He came as High Priest of this better system that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world, and once for all took blood into that inner room, the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it on the mercy seat; but it was not the blood of goats and calves. No, he took his own blood, and with it he, by himself, made sure of our eternal salvation (Hebrews 9:11).

Jesus would ascend to Heaven and then return and meet with Mary Magdalene and many disciples later that same day. A very strange thing was also happening in other parts of Jerusalem. Hundreds of souls who had just accompanied Jesus from below and who had recently died were making the briefest of appearances to their loved ones, as the Scripture attests. And when the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. Many bodies of the saints who had died were raised up and came out of the tombs after his resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:52.)

In the meantime, Jesus had to regroup with all those he had set free from Paradise. The magnificent procession began to ascend in splendour with its escort of glorious angels, from the grave to the sky. As their ascension took them closer and closer to the throne room a mighty voice could be heard proclaiming his majestic entrance; Psalm 24:7-10 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!

At this command the heavenly music began. The sound of thousands of pipes, the voices of hundreds of harmonies, the deepest of vibrating bass and the ascending range of every stringed instrument created a majestic symphony. Jesus had come home, and the Bible trumpets his victorious homecoming. ‘He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he sustains everything in the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:3) This was the moment, purification for the sin of all mankind had been made and now everything in the Universe was integrated into his Being of power.

Ephesians 1:19-21. how vibrant and powerful is that divine energy that comes from God to us when we simply believe that he is the creator and generator of this supernatural power Which exploded into reality when he raised Jesus from the dead and took him into heaven to sit next to him at his right hand. 21. This heavenly place and position took Jesus as God and man above any other force or realm of authority that can be named, whether on earth or in the heavens…and he has become the centre of all consequence and meaning in the universe.

All the angels and all those who had come with Jesus on the upward journey beheld their king in his place of honour and joined in the magnificent celebration. His time in heaven for these celebrations was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day, still bearing the marks of the cruel wreath of thorns from his flogging, and the wounds to his hands and feet and side from the cross. He would now spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection, to seal The Plan of his Father and see it implemented for the rest of time. At the end of those forty days he would return to Heaven, to begin his new mission upon the planet through the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in the mouth of Jesus, and Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth. After those forty days on the earth Jesus returned to Heaven and ten days after that, Jesus and Father sent Holy Spirit to the earth on the day of Pentecost. Holy Spirit would become the bond between Heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from Heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God. This New Creation Being could walk in God’s ways in the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Through grace and faith humanity could win its struggle against the mindset of lostness and separation called the law of sin and death, and within the human pain of this struggle would be found the cry of Holy Spirit wrestling to join the minds and hearts of people to God. This struggle and wrestle would exist throughout time as the Spiritual energy of God’s love that would never cease its activity in the hearts of humanity. It would be the sign of the divine heart exercising its love in the subduing of human nature, that it might resonate with the nature of God. Whenever this truth would be embraced by a human heart, that heart would at last find itself at home, around the Family table, where it was destined eternally to be. To be continued.

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CALVARY

Jesus had been sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate and then tortured and flogged by the cruel guards of King Herod, and finally commanded by Pilate to carry his cross to Calvary, or Golgotha, which means ‘the place of the Skull’. Pilate told the Centurion to arrange for an escort of guards around Jesus to escort him to the windswept hill. One of the Centurion's men put the heavy beam on Jesus' bleeding shoulder as they left the yard and went into the crowded street. The already large crowd continued to grow, some of them followers and friends, others bitter enemies, and yet others who were just confused and angry. Jesus staggered and buckled under the weight of the beam but he continued to drag it behind him. It was the custom to write a description of the crime committed on a clay plate and fix it to the top of the cross. Pontius Pilate had written an inscription that read, “THE KING OF THE JEWS” An angry voice called out above the crowd “Who wrote that inscription? – it’s wrong”, and one of the temple priests had protested that It should have said that ‘He said he was king of the Jews’ However Pilate had made it very clear to them earlier that he had written that inscription and it had to stay as it was.

A few paces further on Jesus staggered again but this time fell headlong to the ground. He could see blood flowing freely from Jesus now and he knew that he had to keep him on his feet. He must not let Jesus die here on the street. A burly lumbering man who, by the look of his clothing was visiting from some other region, was close by Jesus as he stumbled forward. The Centurion called out to the man. “You, help him. He is too weak to carry that on his own.” The man from Cyrene did what he was told and took the beam and strode on into a journey that was to be immortalized in endless time, as a reminder to all of us to not just be onlookers but to take up our share of the burden of the cross. When the trek to Calvary was completed, it would take six full hours on Calvary for Jesus to die.

Mary the mother of Jesus along with some of her companions reached the flat terrain at the top of Calvary and moved close to the area where Jesus was being nailed to the cross. they could hear the dull clink of hammers beating against metal, bone, and timber, mingled with the muffled sound of pain. Mary was also joined there by the disciple John; the other disciples having preferred to hang back from the crowd. Two criminals were already hanging on crosses either side of the hole where Jesus’ pole was to be fixed, but these two men were tied to their crosses, not nailed. Jesus was finally hoisted up and then the pole was crudely dumped into the hole prepared for it. Some time was spent securing its placement so that it stood erect and stable in the rocky ground. A range of utterances rushed from the mouths of people standing watching when the cross fell into place and when the nails tugged on the body they were pinned into. Some of the sounds were stifled cries of shock and dismay while others were more like startled yells of alarm. But overriding these noises was the swelling chant of taunts and slogans coming from the crowd. Then the priests and the leaders of the Jews joined in the chant. “You were pretty good at saving others, but you can’t even save yourself.  If you are the Promised One, our Messiah, then come on down from that cross and prove it to us. Weren’t you going to pull down our temple and rebuild it again in three days? Well, why not get yourself down from that cross?”

John winced when he heard Jesus splutter as a soldier tried to push a sponge of sour wine and myrrh into Jesus' mouth. Jesus turned his face aside and refused the swab. Centurion ordered the soldier away and the man joined the other soldiers who were throwing dice to see who was going to keep Jesus’ robe. Dust was spitting itself into peoples' faces on this strangest of days and gusts of wind blew as storm clouds raced faster than usual across the sky, causing a flickering of sunshine and deep shadow. As Jesus hung there the criminals beside him were weakening, groaning in their pain, when one of them turned to Jesus. He had earlier on joined the choir of obscenity, picking up the ugly chant with gusto. He now wanted to have his last few words of bravado heard in this dark prison of life and death he had made for himself. “they’re telling you to get yourself down, but how about us? That would be a real miracle, even I would believe you.” He was delighted with the impression this made on the crowd, as they clapped and cheered him, but the man on the other side shouted at him angrily.” “Are you mad? Don't you even fear God? Don't you know who this is? We deserve to be here, but he doesn’t. He has never done a wrong thing.” He then turned to Jesus and said “Lord, will you remember me when you are in your mighty kingdom?” Jesus turned his head and looked at him with love, saying “Today you are coming home with me to Paradise.” 

John put his arm around Mary's shoulders as she looked on, with tears rolling down her cheeks and her countenance numbed from all expression. John tried to shield Mary from watching but she wanted to see her son. She remembered tending his little body when he was a baby, that life that was part of her life. It was then that Jesus looked down at his mother standing next to John. He spoke to her through parched lips. “Mother let him be your son.” His head then turned towards John.  Mary looked at John and clung on to his arm. “Son let her be your mother.” John stood with her and watched her son's life draining from him. As they stood shielding their faces from the biting dust that came in bursts, and their eyes from the intermittent dazzle of the sun, they were astonished to see the sun dimmed and the dazzle become a weak gleam. High noon surrendered to a deep darkness which remained for three full hours. Darkness took over that day, in those last hours and put a stop to some things. Shouts of bravado that just moments ago would have roused bold echoes now hung hollow in the still air, and those mockers that had stood close to the action at the foot of the cross now slid back into the crowd.

There were Angels suspended within this pall of sadness that shrouded the desolation below as Heaven waited in eternity and three hours of darkness passed on earth.

Then Satan shot himself like a dart into the one that hung between two criminals on a lonely plateau of the place of the Skull. The gigantic spirit of Jesus absorbed the full impact of Satan as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the ages to come assailed his being. Thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. The magnitude of this kind of collision, the sum of all sin hitting the sum of all innocence, shakes all created things.  A swirling sea of fear clawed at Jesus and sought to pull him under, but he hoisted his faith above the fear with absolute trust in his Father's love. His great spirit swallowed every vile accusation that Satan hurled at him, and he took them all into himself and locked them safely within his vault of perfect love. He owned it all. He had become the reservoir of all evil in one moment of time, yet he was completely innocent of any one wrong deed. He rallied his strength once more, but another missile of horror careened into him more powerfully and more deadly than anything before, sweeping over him and submerging him into an impotence and a canceling of all hope. It was black and fathomless, nothingness. It was like annihilation. This was the cup that he told Father he would accept, but he did not know it would be like this. He was living out the prophetic fulfilment of the first verse of Psalm 22 spoken by David.  ‘My God My God why have you forsaken me?’ The source of this horrific thought was not Father God. Darkness had assailed the human heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, of the lineage of David, and in an instant, he knew the answer to his question. He had not been forsaken by his Father, but in his humanity, he had experienced forsakenness for a moment, so that no living soul from this time on would ever have to feel forsaken by God again because of their human weakness.  From this first verse and through many of the next nineteen verses David prophesied the agony of Jesus as Son of Man upon the cross, with such utterances as. Psalm 22:16 A company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet - they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots…

And then, within the agony of the Son of Man the resurgent faith of the Son of God declared itself triumphally in the following verses. 19. But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!... Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard him, when he cried to him.  As he hung there, he embraced the tragic weakness of humanity and touched the feelings of forsakenness for every human soul throughout all ages. The vast bank of love that filled heaven filled his heart and went out to a beloved humanity. He looked at the mocking faces standing round the cross and he loved them. He sent his voice into a waiting heaven and cried out. “Father, forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing.” He had done it. It was finished. The Plan OF SALVATION could now be put into effect.

Jesus had something more to say but his throat felt parched, and he wanted to speak with strength. “I'm thirsty,” he croaked out. The Centurion, who was ever there on duty, called the soldier over who had shoved the sponge in Jesus' face earlier. “Give him the wine sponge” he ordered. The soldier jumped to the command and put the sponge up on a pole to Jesus, who could now say loudly and clearly what had to be said in his last moments. “Father into your hands I now offer my Spirit.” Then in one last gasp he shouted loudly for all about him to hear. “It is finished!” Then he died. And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

Who brought about the death of Jesus? Was it Jesus, His Father, The Jews, The Romans, our sin? All of these played very significant parts, and there are Scriptures for each of their roles. But it was finally Jesus who said these words. 

John 10:17…I lay down my life for my sheep - I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This command I have received from My Father.” At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed. An earthquake tore a searing gash into the mountainside and people were toppled off their feet. Rocks split apart and the graves and tombs on a nearby hill cracked open. People ran in fear from the place, but they did not know where to go. At that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb, and when their knife pierced the sacrificial animal the true Lamb of God offered himself on Calvary as the final sacrifice for all sin. The priests were thrown off their feet by the earthquake. The temple shook as huge stones fell from the parapets and the great veil in the temple proper, which separated the place of God’s presence in the holy place from the rest of the temple was lightning torn from top to bottom. 

When that veil was torn it signified that Christ as both man and God had not only done away with the separation of mankind from God in the temple, but he had done away with the separation of mankind from God in all the earth. He had gone ahead for all of us to live in his abiding presence. We can now have faith to come confidently into this holy place in our own hearts because of his mercy upon our imperfect humanity and we can receive the power of his life within us to do what is right and pleasing to God.  The veil that was torn when Jesus died on the cross on that awesome day was a declaration of the certain hope of our salvation and loving forgiveness and has become the anchor for our souls.

The carrion crows were in for a disappointment that day. They were not to know that the next day was the Sabbath, and that it was against temple law for dead bodies to be left hanging on a holy day, so all the criminals had to be dead before sundown and taken off their crosses. The two criminals who were tied to their crosses were still a long way from death so Centurion had his men break their legs so that they would die quickly. The Centurion then had the task of ascertaining if Jesus was indeed dead. He called over one of his guards. “Give me a lance,” he commanded. He took the shaft and instructed the guard on how to plunge it into Jesus body, under his heart, where the pericardial sac would have amassed body fluids if he had expired. Water gushed out and the Centurion knew the day's work was done. Having witnessed the earthquake and all the things that were done he knew that this man was indeed the Son of God.

The Prince of Darkness now realized that this man’s body, which had just been destroyed on Calvary and which had contained no fault or sin could not suffer the consequence of sin, which is death, and therefore could no longer be kept captive in the grave of this lower world, as Jesus says through David in the Psalm You will not let my soul rest in the grave, you will not let your Holy One see corruption (Psalm 16:10).

Scripture is clear about the consequence of death from sin, right from sin’s beginning when Adam believed the lie that Satan told Eve about them becoming as wise and as powerful as God if they ignored what God said about not eating from the tree of knowledge.  That lie made them feel that God was withholding from them the wisdom and power that they could have without him. They thought that they would be more fulfilled by ignoring what God said rather than by trusting in a heart relationship with him.

That sin resulted in the heart of humanity being separated from the life of God and led to their physical and moral corruption and final physical death. (Romans 5:12).  All of humanity followed Adam’s pathway of the ‘law of sin and death’ as it is written; ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God’. And the Bible describes the process. ‘Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death’ (James 1:14).  In the forty-day of fasting and temptation of Jesus in the wilderness Satan had been given free rein to tempt Jesus to the fullest extent, and Scripture declares Jesus as innocent from both sin and its deathly consequence. ‘We know that Jesus had the same temptations we do, though he never once gave way to them and sinned.’ (Hebrews 4:15) 

Jesus was without sin because he trusted his Father with all his heart to fulfill his heart’s desires. His human desires which are common to us all were subdued by his higher heartfelt Godly desire and so they did not conceive and give birth to sin, and therefore did not bring forth death. The moment Jesus died the cosmic law of sin and death was being overturned to make way for a new cosmic law to come into effect - the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and that new cosmic law did not exist in Eden. It would occur only after Jesus rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to give us the risen life of Jesus within, and a new heart like his own. Our hearts can now be fulfilled with a new desire that freely chooses to fulfill the desires of God’s heart.

As Jesus hung on the cross and offered his spirit to his Father his spirit left his dead body hanging on the cross, and he saw a bolt of lightning and Satan being caught in it and hurled downwards. Jesus had foretold this to his disciples on two occasions, saying. I saw Satan as lightning falling from Heaven… (Luke 10:18). And also, Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." This He said, signifying by what death He would die. (John 12:31)

Jesus also knew that before he ascended, he must first descend into the place of departed souls and he began to travel downwards himself, and knew he was on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades.  Thank you Jesus for overturning the law of sin and death, and for giving to us the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. May we enter through that torn veil and live that life with your heart towards the Father. Amen.    To be continued…

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THE PASSOVER SUPPER

Passover was the busiest time of the year in Jerusalem when crowds of Jews from all over the Empire were gathering for the feast. Jesus had arrived triumphally seated on a donkey into Jerusalem earlier in the week and the crowds had welcomed him as their prophet, miracle worker and King to be, shouting Hosannah and casting palm leaves on the ground before him. People were amazed and awestruck at his commanding presence when he tipped over the tables of the greedy money changers in the temple, and all of this brought Jesus under fiercer and more intense scrutiny from the temple leaders than ever before. Questions were hurled at him to entice him into confrontation regarding moral and legal issues of their temple religion. But Jesus was not about to be baited like an animal of prey. He fielded their questions with a calm authority, and it was the tormentors who became enraged by the superior wisdom and integrity of their victim to be. Crowds of Jews looked on in expectation. Many wanted a show of power and strength to come from Jesus after these thrusts and parries, for surely this was the time for him to start his kingdom, but they were to be disappointed. Jesus was on a path that would lead to a far greater demonstration of such power that the whole cosmos would be shaken by it, and he knew that even though the time was short, it was still not yet.

After three days of this exhausting exchange with the leaders and the constant attention from the crowds Jesus took the twelve aside and told them that he wanted to go and spend some time in prayer with his Father. He told them he wanted to share the Passover feast with them that evening. Jesus told them he had organized somewhere for them to have the meal. “Where will it be Master?” asked Peter. “In about three hours I want you and John to go to the city square where you will find a water carrier with a pitcher of water on his shoulder. He will be looking out for you. You are to follow him to the place he leads you to and go in and ask the owner to take you to the guest room, a large room upstairs. He will be waiting for you and will show you where everything is and you can then prepare the feast for us. We will be along soon after.” With that Jesus told the others to go off and spend some time in prayer and preparation for the event, while he would pray by himself, and meet them back at the place where they now were.

The two disciples found the man carrying the pitcher of water in the square just as Jesus had said, and they followed him as he entered a two-storey building. There they met the owner of the house who led them to the room that had been prepared for them. This man had been instructed by God in a dream to set aside the room and he had obeyed without question. After his time of prayer Jesus met with the others and they went to the room. It was evening time and there was a large table set out with the Passover meal, and there they sat at the table with Jesus in the middle of them.

Passover was the festival time that celebrated the event of Moses bringing the Nation of Israel out of their slavery from Egypt. The Passover meal was not just a meal but a series of meals, interspersed with pauses for reflection and readings from the Scriptures in remembrance of the miraculous way God had freed them from their oppressors. After one of the meals, at which they ate roasted lamb and bitter herbs, Jesus stood up and went over to one of the sizeable bathing bowls and taking off his outer robe he wrapped a large towel around himself and beckoned the disciples to come over to him. “What are you doing?” asked Peter. “I am going to wash your feet,” replied Jesus. it was customary as a Jewish ritual of cleansing for guests to have their feet washed by a servant of the house from the dirt and grime of walking in the dusty streets when they gathered together for a meal. But Peter resisted this servant act from his master Jesus.

“Not mine,” exclaimed Peter. The other disciples were also curious and uneasy. “Yes yours,” replied Jesus, “and all of the others too.” When he saw Peter balking and raising objections he stopped and stood up to face them all. “Do you remember when you all became so angry with one another when James’ and John's mother wanted me to give the highest places to her two sons next to me in my kingdom?” “Yes,” they said, remembering it well. “Well at that time I told you that if you want to show you have true authority you will serve one another. If you think I have authority with you then you will let me serve you by washing your feet. Otherwise, you are saying you don’t recognize my authority.” He began to wash the disciples’ feet, and when he came to Peter, Peter protested. “No Master you will not wash my feet.” “So, you don’t want to be part of what I am doing?” Peter knelt in front of Jesus and said. “Of course, I do. I’m sorry. Please Lord, wash my hands and my head as well.” “Just your feet Peter, here, in the bowl.” Jesus then continued to wash the feet of all the men, as they came forward one by one, some with tear-streaked faces.

Heaven watched on silently as thousands of thousands of angels strained to see all that was being done and said in this most holy moment. They watched as their God cleansed a grimy unclean world from off those he loved, as he would for all who would let him do so, down through the ages. When he had finished washing them, he stood up again and said. “Now you are clean, but not all of you.” One of them wanted to know what he meant, so he asked them to come back to the table with him, where they would continue their meal.

After they had sat down, he asked for the bread and wine to be served, and then he said plainly, “One of you will betray me.” They were all shocked, and began to discuss this amongst themselves, but then their distress overwhelmed them, so they began to ask him one by one, “Is it me Master?” they pleaded anxiously, without getting a reply. John knew the depth of love that he himself had for Jesus and did not even question his own heart as to whether he might be the one, so he simply asked, “Who is it Lord?” Jesus saw their trouble and concern, so he said, “The one who dips his bread with me into the soup.” At that very moment Judas had his bread in the soup along with the bread in the hand of Jesus. The moment passed in the confusion, and nothing appeared to register in the minds of the other disciples, so Jesus let the moment pass, then Judas, feeling safe, said, “Is it me Lord?” “You said it.” Jesus handed him the piece of dipped bread from his own hand and said to him. “Go and do what you have to do.” Judas got up and grabbed the money bag and strode out, excited by a dark and distorted sense of power in his newfound political mission. Judas always was a political activist looking for regime change, and he had seen Jesus as the man who would satisfy his rebellious and resentful attitude to Roman authority. And now he was bitterly disappointed in the kind of servant leadership that Jesus was demonstrating. It was too weak for his liking, and he felt betrayed. Satan had captured his will and his resentful revenge was targeted at Jesus, and the best way to get even was to betray his friend Jesus in return. That cost Judas everything. The other disciples supposed that he had received instructions from their master concerning some arrangements that had been organized between them, perhaps to distribute the money to the poor.

Jesus turned to the other disciples and took a large piece of bread from the bowl. They watched him as he broke it into twelve pieces, keeping one, and handing the rest around to the remaining eleven. “This is my body. This has been broken into pieces but when we eat it, it becomes one piece again, because we are one. Whenever you and those who come after you do this in the future, you will join yourselves to one another and to me, and I will be there with you. Unless you have my life in you, you will not know what life really is.” He took a cup of the ceremonial wine and drank from it, then passed it around for them all to drink. After they had finished it he said to them,” This is my blood. Just as my body will be torn to pieces for you, so too will my blood be spilled for you. This is a sign of my life and of the new promise from God to give you and all of humanity our life to share, not just a life of rules and regulations, but our very divine life. Whenever people do this in the future, I want them to remember that I died for them and that I will come back again at the end of time, in the full power and glory of my kingdom.”

Once again, they recalled what he had said to them about his coming back at the end of time. He had warned them of the things that would happen in the earth just before that mighty and awesome day when he would be seen by all the world coming in the clouds of heaven. They recalled his predictions of the earthquakes and natural disasters that would strike the earth, the rising tide of self-interest and wars and terror, the epidemic of fear and hopelessness. They shuddered within themselves, and they were comforted by his presence.

The feast had come to an end, and he stood and asked them to come with him into a garden near the olive grove, where he wanted them to pray with him. “In a few hours the temple leaders will arrest me, and I will be put on trial. After my arrest you will all become terrified and desert me, but it will fulfill the Scripture which says that when the shepherd is struck the sheep will run in all directions.” Peter protested, “Even if everyone else deserts you I will never run,” and James and the others joined in the protest. Peter drew out his dagger, quickly followed by James. “These are two daggers,” said Peter, seeing James's drawn dagger, “and I will die with you before I let anyone take you away.” Jesus looked at Peter. “Lucifer is out to get you Peter, and before the night is over you will separate yourself from me in fear, but I will be praying for you that your faith will remain strong. You will hear a rooster crowing in the morning, and when you hear it, it will be a stark reminder of what I just told you, and for now, you can both put your daggers away.” But Peter protested all the more, and Jesus let him talk on.

Jesus took the men to the garden area and asked Peter and John and James to accompany him further, motioning for the others to stay back. A little farther on he asked the three to wait and pray while he went on his own to pray to his Father. Finding a place, he fell on his face and began to quake inside with a peculiar dread. He would face torture and death in an unbearable and agonizing way. He would be totally alone, suffering the shame and reproach of a criminal. These thoughts tormented his mind and dried up his soul. Darkness tried to ride in on this torment. He began to sweat profusely, and he groaned, till he started to taste blood in his mouth. The blood ran down his chin, and then he saw droplets of blood on the backs of his hands. This was the cup of pain and sorrow that he was being asked to take. It was too much, and he begged for Father to take it away. He asked if there was some other way that he might accomplish what he had been sent to do, but he told Father that nonetheless he would do whatever he wanted him to. He staggered to his feet and groped his way to where he had left the three disciples. They were asleep.

Jesus groaned inwardly again and waking them up he pleaded with them. “Couldn't you have stayed awake and prayed? You know I am about to die, and I feel my life draining from me already, and I am almost overwhelmed by it. You need to pray too so that you will not be completely overwhelmed.” They spluttered out their apologies. He forlornly made his way back to his place and cried out to Father again, to never forsake him, but still the agony fastened itself to his soul. He asked Father again if there was any other way, and again he yielded his will to his Father.

After more suffering that became more than he could bear, he returned to the three, but they had fallen asleep again. He pleaded with them again not to go to sleep. They didn’t know what to say. Sleep had become their escape from the heaviness of their grief and sorrow. Father watched from heaven and shared his son's agony, knowing that this was the darkest hour that his son had ever known. This was breaking his heart and all of heaven was watching with him and sharing his grief, so he summoned an angel to go and strengthen and comfort his Son. Jesus drew in heavenly strength and stood to face his betrayal, denial, trial and flogging, his sentencing and his carrying a cross to die upon at Calvary - for us.

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THE JONAH SYNDROME

God wanted to save the great city of Nineveh in Assyria (about 755 years BC), so he sent Jonah, a prophet of Israel with a warning about the harm and destruction they were causing one another that would end up destroying them as a people unless they went through a spiritual conversion of their minds and hearts. Jonah 1:1 GOD's Word came to Jonah, son of Amittai: "Up on your feet and on your way to the big city of Nineveh! Preach to them. They're in a bad way and going from bad to worse and I can't ignore it any longer."

However, Jonah had made his own judgement about what God really needed to do with this bunch of people. Jonah was a fierce nationalist, and he could not agree with God’s appraisal of the fate of this despicable Assyrian city, and he tried to escape his responsibility by running away from it. The name Jonah in Hebrew means dove, which speaks of the Holy Spirit’s anointed message through this prophet of God. And that message was being contested by the messenger himself! Jonah's attempt to run away probably has some logic to it because he would/could have assumed that God only spoke to Israel – not so!

God showed Jonah in this experience the magnitude of his goodness and mercy to all people, not only Israel, and that as the Lord over the whole earth he could hold people accountable to his basic covenant standards of blessings and cursing whenever he wanted to. For those ignorant of his covenant, he had respect to a person’s heart of a good conscience towards God (IE, Job and his friends). And he did send prophets to other nations, to Egypt (Moses to Pharoah), and Babylon (Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar), and Jesus reaching out to gentiles (the centurion, the woman touching the hem of his garment etc). Jonah didn’t think that way.

When Jonah ran away, he boarded a boat to sail off as far away as he could in the opposite direction to Nineveh, but a huge storm hit the ship and the crew members cried out to their gods to find out who had offended some god for this catastrophe to happen. Then they turned on Jonah because they suspected he was running away from something, hiding down in the hold of the boat. Jonah knew he was the culprit, and he knew he was trapped. Jonah 1:8 “What have you done,” they asked, “to bring this awful storm upon us? Who are you? What is your work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?” And he said, “I am a Jew, from Israel,I worship Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the earth and sea.” Then he told them he was running away from his mission from the Lord. The men were terribly frightened when they heard this. “Oh, why did you do it?” they shouted. “What should we do to you to stop the storm?” For it was getting worse and worse. “Throw me out into the sea,” he said, “and it will become calm again. For I know this terrible storm has come because of me.”

That solved the problem for the crew, but it did much more than that. The crew of the ship all turned to God, and the anointing of the ‘dove’ worked through the resistant Jonah, nonetheless. Jonah 1:15 Then they picked up Jonah and threw him overboard into the raging sea—and the storm stopped! The men stood there in awe before Jehovah, and they sacrificed to him and vowed to serve him.

Jonah then learned the hard way that God was more persistent and determined than he was about the fate of Nineveh. God then arranged for a second chance and another ocean voyage for Jonah, but this time underwater. He ended up in the belly of a whale after he was thrown overboard from the ship, and he cries out to the Lord in prayer. Jonah 2:7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!” And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

God plants Jonah back at the coast from the same place where he boarded the boat to escape from his God appointed mission. He then goes to Nineveh and preaches for forty days, and everyone repents and turns to the Lord. Jonah 3:1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out within it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them… And when God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he abandoned his plan to destroy them and didn’t carry it through.

This was the last thing that Jonah had wanted to happen. Jonah wanted God to judge them and destroy them. God wanted to save them. It was God’s appointed time of spiritual challenge and godly change for Nineveh and after forty days it was accomplished. The number forty narrative in the Bible speaks to us of appointed times of challenge and change where God manifests the divine power of his plan at work for us and with us. These number forty appointed times narratives occurred in the forty years with Moses as he led Israel through the wilderness, and with Jesus for forty days in his time of trial and temptation in his wilderness experience of overcoming the devil. This was an appointed time for Nineveh, and things were not going well at all for the Ninevites at the time Jonah served as a prophet. There are records of famines and domestic uprisings occurring during that time and there were wars with other nations and a run of diplomatic disasters. It has been recorded that in 755 BC there was both an earthquake and an eclipse, which were both threatening omens to the Assyrians, so a strong warning was what God wanted to give them and that was obviously what they heeded. Jonah gets angry with God for this. Jonah 4: This change of plans made Jonah very angry. He complained to the Lord about it: “This is exactly what I thought you’d do, Lord, when I was there in my own country, and you first told me to come here. That’s why I ran away to Tarshish. For I knew you were a gracious God, merciful, slow to get angry, and full of kindness; I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people.

The Jonah syndrome What had Jonah learned in all of this and what did he not learn? Jonah learned that God’s love was not only just for Israel but for the whole world. What he failed to learn was how to accept that and to see people the way God sees them. Jonah's reluctant mission had succeeded against all his own hopes. God loved the Assyrians, to Jonah's horror, and he became resentful and went into depression. There is no mention of Jonah ever having a change of heart in this matter. Perhaps he just ended up a cranky old man.

Jonah 4:3 So, GOD, if you won't kill them, kill me! I'm better off dead!" GOD said, "What do you have to be angry about?" But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city. GOD arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up. But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah's head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: "I'm better off dead!" Then God said to Jonah, "What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?" Jonah said, "Plenty of right. It's made me angry enough to die!" GOD said, "What's this? How is it that you can change your feelings from joy to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can't I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to joy, this big city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand childlike people who don't yet know right from wrong?"

There is a number one hundred and twenty narrative in the Bible, and it applies to the work of God upon the hearts of the people of Nineveh. It speaks of life being reordered from a natural order to a new spiritual order, from ‘flesh to spirit’. God spoke about this ‘one hundred and twenty’ narrative to Noah. Genesis 6:2 My Spirit shall not plead the cause of man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be one hundred and twenty years

The number one hundred and twenty also speaks of the new order of spiritual life for mankind at Pentecost. ‘Peter stood up among the disciples and the company of persons was in all about one hundred and twenty (Acts 1:15)

What are we to learn about the ‘Jonah syndrome’ in the troubled days in which we live? We learn that we are left with a choice to either copy Jonah's mean and awkward hatred of his worldly enemies, or to see a world greatly in need of God’s warning and God’s mercy. Jonah was a very privileged man in covenant relationship with God. He was called of God, chosen by God and given a message from God to change a nation and to change history. He finally obeyed God with a lot of arm-twisting and delivered the message and the mission was successful – BUT – he had a lousy elitist attitude. He turned gracious privilege into nasty entitlement. He was going to decide who was going to receive God’s mercy – they would be people who had a worldview most like his, and who shared his iron-clad definition of a censorious God. There are also some people today who would rather shrink God’s atoning grace than magnify it.

Our troubled world is receiving strong warnings from God in the midst of the harm and destruction it is bringing upon itself at this time. The God option is for this world to go through a spiritual conversion of minds and hearts right across the globe. The world today is experiencing both the ‘forty’ narrative of a time of spiritual challenge and godly change and the ‘one hundred and twenty’ narrative of being reordered from a natural order to a new spiritual order in Jesus. When by the grace of God, I awoke to the fact that I was not an outsider to the Kingdom of God but an insider in the Kingdom of God through Jesus it had nothing to do with my goodness or badness or anybody else’s opinion of me – it was between God and me through the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t change us from bad to good but from natural to spiritual through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and when we realize that we understand what Paul said about himself and all the rest of us in our basic humanity. ‘For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my human nature. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out (Romans 7:18). That is why Paul also wrote ‘For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside.’

This is a time to see the world as a world that God loves, as he did Nineveh, and to see it reinstated into his Covenant blessings through Jesus Christ. This is not just a prayer FOR people, but it is also a merciful attitude TO people, which does not mean that we are not to discern between good and evil and to stand against evil. We stand with all our might against the tyrants and dictators of today who murder thousands of innocent people, but we are not to be spiritual elitists with a Jonah syndrome of being ‘King’s Kids’ trying to impress the people of this world with some kind of superior brand of spirituality – God help us! We are simply a blessed people that have been given the grace and mercy of God. Paul puts this balancing act into context when he describes how God’s love works through us in this kind of situation - ‘Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ (1Corinthians 13:6). So our prayer is that we let the anointing of the dove to cause us to not only have a message of love and hope but to be that message to the people in our world.

Luke 23:34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

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A NEW ORDER notes When God created the Universe he began with an order of material being or existence, and then created human life with a much higher order of life with moral responsibility for relationships and loving responses. We are going to look a the ongoing work of God in the reordering of that relational order of our lives to bring us closer and closer to him. We start with God as Uncreated Being creating the material universe in the presence of his already created angelic spirit beings. The material universe was an order of created being which reflected his creative genius of design in observable Laws, such as the laws of mathematics and physics and chemistry, and the observable beauty of light and colour and the harmony of movement and sound and the forms of life and energy and growth. All of these laws and forms of the new order of created being were created out of emptiness and darkness and chaos and disorder. Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

A new order – a new Law of life When God created humanity, the being that was to reflect the image of his own nature and being, he recreated within that being his own order of life of love and trust. The first of these beings, Adam, broke the law of love and trust when he was deceived into a mistrust of God by another created spirit being, Lucifer, who had desecrated that law of love and trust through the darkness of his pride and deception.

A new order – a new Law of life (and death) Adam had allowed darkness into the being of humanity and a new order of human life came into being – the law of sin and death. Adam was no longer innocent, and his disobedience estranged him from the life of God - separation and death entered humanity from that time on. Nevertheless, God gave humanity a conscience concerning good and evil which was not perfect because it was self-centred, but people could still choose to honour God. Many offered sacrifices to God out of a good heart like Abel, while many others became corrupt and lived selfishly for themselves like Cain.

A new order – a good conscience toward God. Then came the time of Noah, and darkness had established a firm foothold in the human heart. God saw that the heart of mankind had become corrupt and the whole earth was filled with violence and estrangement from God. God observed all this corruption in the world and he said to Noah, who had a good conscience towards God “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! God told Noah he would send a flood to cover the whole earth (Genesis 6:11) and he told Noah to build an ark, and God saved Noah and his family from the flood. After the rains and the flood had subsided Noah was told to send out a dove, representing God’s Spirit to fly freely out over the earth as a sign of the new order of humanity being given a fresh start. From the time of Noah a new order of mankind that descended from Noah began to live in the order of a good conscience toward God which guided them within the integrity of their own hearts.

A new order – a new Law of life (the Law of Moses) Then God told a man called Abraham that he would become the father of the Hebrew nation. And through Abraham there came forth the twelve tribes of Israel and they lived in the new order of God’s wisdom through the Law of Moses which was a new and higher order than the human conscience alone. They became the light of God and his Word in the midst of the darkness in the nations round about them.

Once again, the order of darkness began to demand its place to rule in the midst of this new nation and they became like the nations around them. The order of darkness took the form of their wanting to be ruled by an earthly king rather than by God, because all the other ungodly nations were ruled by kings. The prophet Samuel spoke to God with a heavy heart about what the people had demanded, and God said to him ‘I am the one they are rejecting, not you—they don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually forsaken me and followed other gods. (1Samuel 8:5). So Samuel told the people what the Lord had said. ‘You will shed bitter tears because of this king you are demanding, but the Lord will not help you.” ‘Even so, we still want a king,’ they said, ‘for we want to be like the nations around us.’ The attack of darkness upon the hearts of God’s people has now become set in the desire to want to be like the nations around them. After the death of King Solomon two distinct kingdoms were established. The kingdom of the ten northern tribes settled in Samaria and the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin settled in Jerusalem in the south. The northern kingdom afterwards made ungodly alliances with the other nations and fell into idolatry and were finally dispersed and mysteriously disappeared even though there were anointed prophets in both these kingdoms who faithfully set God’s Word and purpose before them and called them to repentance.

Jeremiah was the prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, and he became grieved about their corruption and idolatry under their mostly, ungodly kings. God told Jeremiah that because of their disobedience they would go into captivity in Babylon, but at the same time he tells Jeremiah to buy a plot of land from his cousin in Ananoth near Jerusalem. Jeremiah is perplexed by this directive from God that seems like a contradiction of purpose, but then he realizes that he is not just doing a favour for his cousin, but that this purchase signifies that the land transaction is a symbol of the promised return of Israel one day back to their land. Jeremiah understands God's plan and promise, and he designates his trusted scribe Baruch to settle the sale and keep the deeds in safety.

A recurring theme of God’s reordering Jeremiah 45:1 The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch (blessed one): … Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And seek not great things for yourself, for I am bringing affliction upon all flesh, says the LORD. But I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go.”

Baruch (whose name means ‘blessed one’) was protected and blessed with life. The southern kingdom was taken into Babylon and after seventy years they returned to Jerusalem and inherited all the land, but some years later darkness again prevailed and there was another falling away. God’s people received no more prophetic comfort or guidance for over four hundred years from the time of their final prophet Malachi until the time of John the Baptist who prepared the way for the Messiah Jesus. Before that southern kingdom went into captivity God also promised a new order of life called The New Covenant (The Law of God’s wisdom written upon the heart - Jeremiah 31:31) that would be ordained upon God’s people at a future time.

A new order – a new Law of life (The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus) God created that new order of life promised to Jeremiah in the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. God and humanity joining together in one Spirit, the greatest order of life for humanity to experience in the earth. This Gift of the Father, The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus through his Son Jesus, who put to death the old order of life, The Law of sin and death when Jesus died on the cross, then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, bringing us into that new order of the Spirit of Life through the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Jesus sowed his life into death and reaped new life in resurrection so that we could inherit this new order of life in the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.

Our global society has become so disordered in recent times that we seem to be seeing the replay of the theme that we saw in God’s word through Jeremiah to Baruch ‘Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And seek not great things for yourself, for I am bringing affliction upon all flesh, says the LORD. But I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go.

In the days in which we live there is the breaking down of things that God has built, and there is the pulling up of things he has planted. We are seeing the breaking down of once reliable democratic systems of government based on Godly morals, and the pulling up of deeply rooted traditions in a new cultural order that replaces the Godly foundations with shallow ideologies of special interest groups that are pitched one against the other. This causes disdain and resentment from zealots to be aimed against people who don’t always agree with the new order virtues or ideologies. Their demand often is. ’We want to do as we please and we would like a law framed for us to have the freedom to do it, and the power to punish anyone who wants to stop us or attempts to criticise us. We are also seeing violence and human suffering in the violent aggression of Russia against Ukraine and against the values of the freedom of western democracy. We also see personal affliction everywhere and the disruption of health and safety and the pressure on financial systems caused by the global pandemic and natural disasters like fires and floods. This is the time to pray for God’s reordering of his Kingdom values to challenge today’s disordered culture and bring his order of life once more into this world.

God also wants to restore the order of his new Law of life in his Church and is saying to the Church to ‘seek not great things for yourself ‘. He has had to tear down and pluck up what may have become worldly and superficial practices in the Church in recent times concerning celebrity leadership styles and the love of money. God says to us as he did to Baruch (the blessed one) I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go. We receive his life that we may give it to his world, wherever we may go.

Paul writes about this experience of being given a new order of life and he shares it with all who desire to live with a true heart of a good conscience towards God. An order of life is a Law of life because it means to regulate how that life is lived to its highest order, so as I read the following Scripture from Romans Chapter 7 I am going to be using the word ‘order of life’ in the context of a ’ law of life’. Romans 7:21 I delight in the law of God (order of God’s wisdom), in my inner being, but I see in my members (outer being) another law (order of life) waging war against the law (order of life) of my mind (in the knowledge of God) and making me captive to the law (order of life) of sin (independent self-interest) that dwells in my members (outer being). Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (sense of miserable estrangement from God)? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself (my inner being joined with God’s Being) serve the law of God (order of God’s wisdom) with my mind (in the knowledge of God), but with my flesh (outer being) I serve the law (order if life) of sin (independent self-interest)…but there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus for the Law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the Law of sin and death…

Contending for the new order of life The Law of sin and death still resides in our mortal being and it contends with the Spirit of Life in Christ in our spiritual being at every turn in our lives as darkness seeks to extinguish that light and that life, but it can be overcome by our faith because the Holy Spirit is always awakening us to the ongoing mission of God for mankind in the earth, which is for us to be transformed into the image and likeness of God in Jesus Christ. Our faith in God’s divine action upon the human heart and mind by the Holy Spirit empowers us with his grace to reorder the reasoning of our minds and to love mercy and to release his wisdom and justice into our personal world. The Holy Spirit will empower us to make commitments and to control our actions and enable us to fulfill God's will for our lives.

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TIMES OF REFRESHING OF GOD’S PRESENCE Acts 3:19 Now change your mind and heart towards God and turn to him so he can cleanse away your sins and send you the appointed times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.

The appointed times (Kairos) of refreshing (anapsyxis; a recovery of breath, revival) from the presence of the Lord speak to us firstly about the sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit as seen throughout the history of the Church, and they also speak to us about our practice of personally abiding in the presence of the Holy Spirit through our faith.

The sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit for the Church began with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and they have continued in the many revivals in different times and in different places throughout history including those moves of God that have occurred in living memory over the last couple of generations. The personal times of refreshing for us is the practice of abiding by our faith in the presence of the Holy Spirit through a desire to draw close to God with a conscious focus of our mind and heart upon his nearness to us. This is beautifully typified in David’s remarkable Old Testament heart to heart experience in the Psalms where he yearns for the presence of God in his life. And even though David did not have the New Testament gift of the Holy Spirit as we do, his experience was prophetic of our abiding with Jesus and the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Adam began life dwelling constantly in the presence of the Lord until he was tempted by darkness to put God out of his mind and act as if God was not there, or that God could not see him. He acted in an independent self-determination in his own self interest to foolishly take for himself what only God could give him, a mature knowledge of good and evil (Hebrews 5:14). He ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil and in disobeying God this way he took to himself a darkened and distorted interpretation of what was good and what was evil, because it was focussed upon a self-centeredness of life rather than a God centeredness. He lost his peace and his sense of oneness with God and then the hidden human flaw of hostility toward God (Romans 8:7) was exposed before God which shocked Adam to his core so that he ran and hid in his naked shame from God. Adam played hide and seek with God - God looked for him and called out to him asking him where he was. Genesis 3:9 Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." God has been calling out ‘where are you?’ to mankind from that time on and humanity still hides from the presence of a loving God, putting him out of their minds. He calls us to rethink and turn back again and embrace his presence.

God’s heart for all mankind always was and still is that we should live in his presence. His presence always was and still is the reality of life for all of humanity, but man has learned to hide from that presence and to put God out of his mind. So while God is always present for us we can choose to not be present for him. That mindset of separation and isolation is the most tragic kind of suffering there is. Whatever kind of suffering we experience, and there are many, can be endured if we know we are in the presence of the Lord. Paul tells us to reckon yourselves alive to God (Romans 6:11). We are alive to God and his presence. To reckon a thing means to render an account of something as true and accurate and to live your life accordingly.

The suffering which seems more real and immediate is the kind that collides with our outer senses because of the vulnerability of our limited humanity when it is under stress. This kind of suffering can take up all our attention and cause anxiety and mental and emotional fatigue. The whole world has experienced that kind of suffering over the last two years of pandemic and now in the current threat of war because of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and also in the aftermath of deadly floods along our East Coast.

Why now? ‘So that the appointed due seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord At the time of its greatest need for comfort and care the world is being shaken and shocked in every way. Now is a time for receiving the very thing that we were created for from the beginning – the presence of God with us in our inner being. God is with us in our times of collision with the sharp edges of a hard world. He lives for that closeness. It was because of his love for that closeness with us that he sent us Jesus, our Emmanuel, ‘God with us’ to be your strength in that difficult thing you are facing now. You will be given the grace of the presence of God in that place of struggle. He will cover your weaknesses and vulnerability with his mercy and love.

Psalm 139:3 You know everything about me Lord. You know what I am going to say even before I say it. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too great for me to understand! It’s all too wonderful for me. I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.

There was an appointed time (Kairos) when God heard the cry of his people who were under the yoke of slavery in Egypt and he delivered them out of bondage and said to Moses ‘my presence will go with you and I will give you rest’. There was also an appointed time for God to send the Holy Spirit upon all flesh (all of humanity) to join us to the life of Jesus. There have also been appointed times of the shaking of all things as in the Reformation and other moves of God so that God could expose what things needed to be reordered according to the way of his Kingdom (That includes the reordering of our own minds and will according to his will – what remains and what has to go).

My prayer is that at this time of God hearing the cry of his people and at this time of shaking that there would be a reordering of things according to the way of his Kingdom and that he will once more pour out his Holy Spirit on all flesh, and that he will say to us ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’. My prayer is also that in the meantime we would draw near to God with the faith that we are indeed abiding in him and in his presence because his Holy Spirit is present with us awakening us to become present with him. Here is a prayer to be said many times a day. I welcome your loving presence Lord, and your powerful work on my behalf in the world of the unseen

Exodus 33:12 My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest, for you have found grace in my sight and I know you by name

Psalm 16:8 I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy;

Psalm 17: 6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me; hear my words and wondrously show your steadfast love,

Psalm 17: 8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings,

Psalm 17: 15 As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.

Isaiah 54.10 My covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

Isaiah 55.6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them… and no one will take them out of my hand.

Isaiah 49.16 I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

Colossians 3:2 Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Genesis 15:1 Do not be afraid; I am your shield and your very great reward.

Jeremiah 31:3 I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Matthew 28:20 I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Ephesians 3:20 He is able to do far more abundantly than all that I ask or think, according to his power at work within me,

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NEVER TOO OLD - The wisdom of God for a balanced life

Proverbs 30:7-9 Two things I ask of you; do not deny them to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane (tapas – manipulate) the name of my God. This powerful prayer is one that we are never too old or too young to pray. In this prayer we are praying for the wisdom for some of the wisest choices we can make for the rest of our lives. And while ever we are alive we can still say the phrase ‘before I die’. This prayer contains a twofold request on behalf of all of us to God. The first request has to do with being given a heart of truth in two special areas in our lives and the second request is being given the integrity to be content in all circumstances whether in times of scarcity or abundance. When we pray about truth, we are asking for two different aspects of untruth to be removed from us, and these are falsehood and lying which have both been in humanity from the very beginning.

Falsehood (shav) was the flaw that Satan exploited in the as yet untested mind and heart of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That word for falsehood shav in Hebrew is a strong negative word describing the deception that leaves one with a feeling of desolation and uselessness (Strong’s Concordance as. ???? shav; to make desolate). And because the heart is our active responder to life it will respond to whatever information the mind feeds it. The lie spoken by Satan and planted in the minds of Adam and Eve was the falsehood of being separated from the truth of God’s love and goodness towards them, and in their deception their human hearts could not trust that God wanted the best for them, and their souls were plunged into desolation. Darkness continues to feed our human heart through an independent mindset of separation that erodes our trust in a loving God and so we decide what we want as the best for our lives. That lie not only robs us of the truth of his loving heart of goodness and blessing towards us but make us live at a distance from God and even to hide from him like Adam and Eve did because of shame and guilt. And so we can end up living a false life with a false image of who we are rather than as the real person in the true image of who God created us to be in Jesus. So we pray for that falsehood to be removed and for us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, for a mindset of faith and trust in him. So he rescues us from the prison of our own falsehood - shava. Ask God to show you who he is to you, and for you, and who you truly are in his sight and he will reveal this to you.

The other aspect of untruth to be removed from us is lying (dabar) and that Hebrew word means do harm to another person by falsely judging or accusing or blaming them. Adam blamed Eve for making him eat of the forbidden fruit - The woman you gave to me, she made me eat it! Not only did he blame her, he blamed God, and did great harm not only to his relationship with God, but also to his relationship with Eve. That lying continues to feed the human heart to this day as an aspect of untruth that we can pray to have removed from us.

The Bible says that ‘life and death are in the power of the tongue’ (Proverbs 18:21) and this misuse of the power of the tongue in the destroying of another person’s name and reputation and honour maligns their essential being or nature. When we pray for God to remove this kind of lying from us we become peacemakers and bless not only our relationships with individuals but we can become part of the blessing and healing of entire communities.

The second request in our prayer is about having the integrity to be content with neither too much wealth nor too much scarcity. The prayer starts by saying ‘give me neither riches nor poverty; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” ‘or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.’ This first part of this request has to do with riches. The request is one of asking for the wisdom to approach life with God as one of always being in need while always being aware of not having greed. The Bible says You cannot serve two masters: God and money. For you will despise one and love the other or love the one and despise the other’. The Scripture also warns us not to determine to be rich to the point where we say we have no need of God and that our own hand can supply for us what we want from life. Deuteronomy 8:12 Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord. He fed you with manna in the wilderness so that you would become humble and so that your trust in him would grow, and he could do you good. He did it so that you would never feel that it was your own power and might that made you wealthy. Always remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you power to get wealth.

I believe that the best place to be coming from when we approach the Lord is from a place of need – ‘feed me with the food that is needful for me’ . When we come to God humbly in this way our need is the voice of our hope, but we also come to God with thanksgiving, for this is our voice of faith. The food that is needful for us speaks of any kind of means or supply. It can mean anything - finances, wisdom, or the abilities that he has put in our hands and in our hearts to do what he would have us do. Knowing we are in need of him also keeps us close to him, not just because of the need, but because the closeness develops into a relationship where we get to know and trust him and to be patient and wait for him to give us the food or particular resource that he knows that we need. Any empowering from God to a person to get wealth is an act of his grace. This is a gift of an ability that is bestowed and not earned, and along with any empowering of any gift or ability comes the accountability towards God for that ability. It is his bestowal, not our entitlement and that bestowal requires our stewardship.

Paul spoke about his empowerment in Christ to having both abundance and scarcity when he shared about learning to be content with whatever he had. Philippians 4:11 I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of contentment in every situation, in abundance or scarcity, whether it be a full stomach or hunger; for I can do all things that God asks me to through Christ who gives me the strength and power to do it. While Paul had a godly approach to abundance and wealth, Paul also speaks about the ungodly approach to abundance and wealth and of a wrong desire to get rich as leading to many temptations. 1Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. In our original prayer in the book of Proverbs we also saw the mention of an ungodly approach to abundance and wealth where it said. ‘feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?

This means that if the love of money drives us to get our own wealth, we become detached from God’s idea of what is needful for us and we deny him, saying ‘Who is the Lord?’ This not only means having our soul pierced with many sorrows, it also means not having faith to draw close to him which means that we don't get to learn to trust him or be patient and be taught of him, and in turn we don't get to know him or to see what he does, and we don’t get to give him thanks in all things.

Just as there is an ungodly approach to wealth there is also an ungodly approach to poverty and scarcity which is highlighted in the second part of our prayer that says. ‘or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.’ This is seen in people who become envious and resentful of the wealth of others and steal and cheat without conscience. This can also become an angry and emotional demand for justice as seen in some of today’s activist and destructive protest culture.

Paul told us he was empowered to live through Christ in godly scarcity as well as in abundance (Philippians 4:11). He gave God thanks in times of abundance and scarcity. He knew that the supernatural work of God in demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit did not depend on money but nonetheless he gave thanks to God for his financial provision, and he honoured those who blessed him and supported him in this way.

Philippians 4:10 How grateful I am and how I praise the Lord that you are helping me again. I know you have always been anxious to send what you could, but for a while you didn’t have the chance. Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little… But even so, you have done right in helping me in my present difficulty. Paul finishes by saying. ‘And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’

Just as there is a godly grace of empowerment for us to get wealth, there is also a godly grace for us to experience scarcity, so that either way we might bestow and multiply grace and blessing to others. I want to underline once again that this attitude of faith towards God concerns more than just material possessions or money. It has to do with time and effort and the care and compassion that is given from each one of us to one another. This emphasises the point about the best place to be coming from as we approach the Lord - We come from that place of need – ‘feed me with the food that is needful for me’. We come from that place of need before God, and we can then go to a place of need in another person’s life with what he puts in our hands and in our hearts to do. In this way thanksgiving is multiplied and more grace is given to us all - Amen.

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THE BURNING BUSH One day God intervened supernaturally in the life of Moses, speaking to him from a burning bush that stayed alight until Moses received and understood God’s message to him.

Exodus 3:1 One day as Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, out at the edge of the desert near Horeb, the mountain of God, suddenly the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians… 10. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, Moses then protests his unworthiness for the task, so we read on. But Moses said, “They won’t believe me! They won’t do what I tell them to. They’ll say, ‘Jehovah never appeared to you!’” The Lord asked him. “What do you have there in your hand Moses?” And he replied, “A shepherd’s rod… (Exodus 4:1)

Moses was leading a very ordinary life looking after his father in law’s sheep, with a shepherd’s rod in his hand and God came into that ordinary life and said to Moses ‘What have you got in your hand?’ What he had in his hand was an ordinary part of his life as a shepherd, but it was to become something that God wanted to supernaturally empower. God had put that rod in his hand and created him to use it with skill and wisdom to be a good shepherd of his flocks. That rod was now to become the rod that parted the red sea. It also became the rod that caused water to flow supernaturally out of a rock so that God’s people could live and not die and drink from the rock and be refreshed. There were three forty-year stages in Moses’ one-hundred-and-twenty-year life. They were the three stages of nurture, development, and empowerment.

Stage 1 (nurture) – Moses grew up as a young man in the royal family of the Pharaoh after being rescued from the river as a baby by Pharaoh’s daughter. Pharaoh allowed Moses’ mother to nurture his young life, so he grew up taught in the ways of God and also instructed in the ways of Egypt. He became an important figure in the court of Pharaoh but when at age forty, having experienced freedom and independence he saw that two of his fellow Hebrews were being beaten up by an Egyptian guard. He got into reaction about such an unjust system and he attacked and killed the guard and had to bury him in the sand. He had rashly taken justice into his own hands and made a serious error of judgment. His unwise reaction to the injustice being done to his own people did not make any changes to the injustice around him and ended up with the Hebrews telling him to stay out of their business as he only made things worse for them. So, Moses had to get away from Egypt or he would have been severely punished and perhaps even lost his own life.

Stage 2 (development) – He then spent forty years in the desert as a shepherd. He was humbled by real life and learned to act responsibly and within the limitations of his own humanity. He hadn’t changed anything concerning justice for his people as yet, but God was changing something in him, through experiences that developed his character requiring him to learn self-control, wisdom and patience.

Stage 3 (empowerment) – The burning bush - He was ready for God to take the natural skills and virtues and mature attitudes he now had about his life and to take him on a supernatural journey where Moses allowed God to work his loving and just and merciful purpose through him. He now began to respond to and be involved in the changes that God desired to fulfill in him and in the world of the lives of those around him - two million Jews being delivered out of Egypt, out of the hand of Pharoah.

Each one of these three forty-year experiences in the life of Moses illustrates a different manifestation of the progressive work of the purpose of God for Moses’ life. The number forty narrative in the Bible speaks to us of appointed times of challenge and change where God manifests the divine power of his life working for us and with us. These appointed times don’t have to be periods of forty years or forty anything as they were with Moses.

Jesus also had three ‘number forty’ stages in his life. He had a forty-day experience in the trial of his faith in the wilderness when he fasted and overcame the temptations of the devil. That was his second ‘forty’ experience. He also had a time of forty days on earth manifesting his risen life after his resurrection. That was his third and final number forty experience. His first ‘number forty’ experience was the time of forty weeks in the womb of Mary which was the manifestation of his incarnation.

In outlining the three stages of nurture and development and empowerment, we see examples in the lives of Moses and Jesus, and we can see examples in our own lives as well. The stages can be summarized broadly as.

Stage one - Privilege and protection of the time of nurture. Moses in the court of Pharoah for forty years. He was being reared in the two distinct cultures of the ways of Egypt and the ways of God, which ended with a crisis of violent conflict and a shameful parting of the ways.

Jesus in the womb of Mary for forty weeks. This was the joining of two different states of being, the human and the divine. It began with the glory of a new creation, and it is to last forever for mankind.

For ourselves this is our upbringing in the particular culture and circumstances of our parents, where in most cases we are sacrificially provided for in body and soul. However, this is not always the way it is and in some cases brings confusion and pain but by God’s grace this can be healed through our understanding of God the Father’s love for us.

Stage two - Training and testing. Moses for forty years in the desert as a shepherd being humbled and developed in character by God and under the guiding hand of his father-in-law Jethro.

Jesus was tested for forty days in the desert where he suffered physically and emotionally and spiritually and overcame the temptations of the devil by listening only to the words of his Father. From that experience Jesus went forth in authority to finally pour out his life for us all.

For us there is the time of ‘making our own way’ in life where we go through the ups and downs and successes and failures, the pain and the joy and the griefs and the sufferings of the lessons of life that develop our character. By the grace of God, we endure, and we learn to lean upon God and to trust him in the yielding of our will to his will for our lives.

Stage three - Empowerment of God with us presence. For Moses this was the burning bush experience. He learned to recognize what God had put in his hand and in his heart in order for him to be the deliverer of God’s love and wisdom to Israel for forty years in the wilderness.

For Jesus – He was to walk for forty days upon the earth to bear witness to his resurrection and after that to ascend to his Father from where he intercedes for us at all times and in all things. He empowers us by his grace to walk with him hand in hand with what the Father has placed in our hand for his will to be done in our lives.

How this ‘forty’ narrative example is applied to our lives. 1Corinthians 10:1 For we must never forget, dear brothers, what happened to God’s people through Moses in the wilderness long ago. God guided them by sending a cloud that moved along ahead of them; and he brought them all safely through the waters of the Red Sea. All these things happened to them as examples—as object lessons to us.

God says to us ‘What is that in your hand? What he also says to us is that he has given us what is in our hand and what he has put in our hand is what he has also put in our heart. He tells us to take hold of that with a new dimension of faith that he is with us in the doing. He says. ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. You have found grace in my sight and I know you by name’.

How do we know what is in our hand? This is not some major penetrating search – we just look around us in our world of those people closest to us and see what it is that God has given us to do to bring his love and care and blessing into their lives - what is the closest situation at hand that is calling for us to give ourselves to right now? He is also making us mindful of the abilities and skills and experience gained in our work or career, and our roles as a parent or spouse or friend, or as a helper or an adviser. He makes us mindful of the opportunities that have moved us forward and challenged us in our growth of character as a person and that have also been used to fulfill us in our world of influence. All of that has been in your hand to do with as you have willed.

But then comes the burning bush experience for us as it did with Moses. God did something so miraculous that it took his attention from that moment of his normal everyday activity and brought him into an encounter with a supernatural God. Our burning bush is the supernatural fire of the Holy Spirit burning within a mortal human life that draws us into an encounter with the living God - We draw near to God and he draws near to us (James 4:8). God wants to bring to our attention that it is time for God to begin working supernaturally to empower those ordinary things in our life where faith can now work in us in a new dimension of his grace and love and power.

The following train of thought came to me when meditating on this truth earlier in the week. When I look around and see what is happening in this pretty ordinary life and see that nothing really special is happening then I remember to look somewhere else where there is a place where God is at work in the world of the unseen, and that is where everything is happening in his world of the Spirit. I then begin to rest in the fact that God is working at something in my world at this moment and that I have the privilege to be part of it. I don't know what it is that he's doing but that doesn’t matter because my faith tells me that it is for good. And by my being connected like that and appreciating what is really happening in that world for me and for those in my world I know that when he does tell me or show me what is happening and what it is that he wants to do with what is in my hand at least I will recognize it and see it by keeping in tune with it in my heart of faith for what he wants to achieve.

Look at your right hand and say to yourself ‘I am walking hand and hand with you Lord into a new future of faith and hope and love and meaning. And the burning bush will stay alight - Forever.

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OUTSIDE THE GATES There is a story in the Old Testament (2Kings 7) about how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This story demonstrates how limited the power of darkness is when it faces up to the power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world – the real world of God’s activity – the world dominated by light and God’s goodness and faith, and with faith we can withstand and overthrow the spiritual darkness in that unseen realm with its fear and deception. The story begins with Israel under siege and with the Syrian army camped in the hills nearby and God’s people starving to death inside the walls of the city of Samaria, which had become the temporary capital of the Northern tribes of Israel.

It was reported that people were paying fifty dollars for the head of a donkey to eat, and the king of Israel was blaming Elisha for causing this situation to come about. That was because Elisha had provoked the Syrian army the previous year when he had asked God to blind their eyes so he could trick them by leading them away from where they were headed, to a city called Dothan, and into the waiting hands of the King of Israel in Samaria, where they were ambushed and defeated. However, by this time the Syrian army had regrouped and now they were back, and the King of Israel was angry with Elisha and threatened to have him killed by his hatchet-man - his chief officer, and Elisha was aware of that plot.

2Kings 6:31 ‘May God kill me if I don’t execute Elisha this very day the king vowed. Elisha was in his house meeting with the elders of Israel and the king sent a message to summons him, and Elisha said to the elders ‘This murderer has sent his chief officer to kill me. When he arrives, shut the door, and keep him out, for the King will soon follow him’, but while Elisha was still saying this, the chief officer arrived followed by the king.

The King must have presumed that Elisha was praying with the men for God’s help. 2Kings 6:31-33 When the king entered the house he said. “Why should I expect any help from the Lord? The Lord has caused this mess,” 2Kings 7:3-21 Elisha replied, “The Lord says that by this time tomorrow two gallons of flour or four gallons of barley grain will be sold in the markets of Samaria for a dollar!” The chief officer objected, “That couldn’t happen if the Lord made windows in the sky!” But Elisha replied, “You will see it happen, but you won’t be able to buy any of it!”

So the King is in two minds and he hesitates, and the plot fails, and the story continues. Vs.3 Now there were four lepers sitting outside the city gates. “Why sit here until we die?” they asked each other. “We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and surrender to the Syrian army. If they let us live, so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway.” So that evening they went out to the camp of the Syrians, but there was no one there! (For the Lord had made the whole Syrian army hear the clatter of speeding chariots and a loud galloping of horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians to attack us,” they cried out. So they panicked and fled into the night, abandoning their tents and horses, and donkeys. When the lepers arrived at the edge of the camp they went into one tent after another, eating, drinking wine, and carrying out silver and gold and clothing and hiding it. Finally they said to each other, “This isn’t right. This is wonderful news, but we aren’t sharing it with anyone! Even if we wait until morning, some terrible calamity will certainly fall upon us; come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.” So they went back to the city and told the watchmen what had happened—they had gone out to the Syrian camp and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there was not a soul around. Then the watchmen shouted the news to those in the palace. The king got out of bed and told his officers, “I know what has happened. The Syrians know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields, thinking that we will be lured out of the city. Then they will attack us and make slaves of us and get in.” One of his officers replied, ‘Why don’t we send out some scouts to see?’. So four chariot horses were found and the king sent out two charioteers to see where the Syrians had gone. They followed a trail of clothing and equipment all the way to the Jordan River—thrown away by the Syrians in their haste. The scouts returned and told the king, and the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the camp of the Syrians. So it was true that two gallons of flour and four gallons of barley were sold that day for one dollar, just as the Lord had said! The king appointed his chief officer to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and trampled and killed as the people rushed out. This is what Elisha had predicted on the previous day when the king came to arrest him, and the prophet had told the king that flour and barley would sell for so little on the following day.

From start to finish this was an outlandish scenario – almost like a stage play of a comedy of errors, with all kinds of characters with all kinds of strange ideas going through their heads, some plotting malice and death and destruction, with suspicion and confusion and panic. The King didn’t know what he believed or what to believe and the people were desperate. Just as it was God’s will to allow Syria to lay siege to Israel it was also God’s will to cause the nightmare panic of the Syrian army and their withdrawal from Samaria. The control of God over history and the power of God’s word in the shaping of history are common themes in the Old Testament. We can affirm that God is also in control over the seemingly outlandish scenario of today’s global society of confusion and panic and suspicion and malice and opposition to God’s word of truth.

When I think of the strange assortment of characters depicted in this real-life drama of the siege upon Israel by the Syrian army I ask myself which of these characters I can most identify with. I find that curiously I identify most with the four lepers. (I had thought that maybe Elisha would be a good choice, but I believe that he represents the Holy Spirit with the Word of God to his people). The reason I chose the four lepers is that when I read or watch the news of the daily happenings and the erosion of values in current mainstream culture, I often feel like I’m outside the gates like they were, not able to and not wanting to share the frenzied confusion of a lifestyle that has become rudderless and cut off from love and truth and faith. I don’t want to let my soul die there, and like the four lepers I don’t want to sit around and wait for the enemy to come and destroy the city and everyone in it. Like the four lepers I want another option and to bring back good news about what God has done!

The four lepers took a risk when they walked boldly into the enemy camp, and the threat to them was what the enemy might do to them, but when they went in they saw with their own eyes that God had been at work because the word of God about the blessing and the relief of the famine in Samaria had been spoken by Elisha and was already in operation. Those lepers should have been the most desperate ones of all the people but if they had not taken this initiative and walked into the enemy camp no one would had moved in the entire city and they all would have starved, even though God’s word of blessing had already been spoken!

Just as the four lepers went into the enemy’s camp, we walk into the enemy’s camp when we venture into the territory of our mind. That is where the devil wants to blind our minds and to plant confusion and deception and fear. That is his greatest weapon, and even though darkness cannot defeat us we can defeat ourselves by believing he has more power than God. But when we walk boldly and confidently into that territory with a mind that is renewed by the Word of God we align ourselves with the authority of his Word and we resist the devil and the darkness has to flee, just like the Syrian army (James 4:7). And just as God’s word of blessing had been spoken over Israel by Elisha (Elisha means ‘God of Blessing’), the word of spiritual blessing has been spoken over us in Jesus and we are to trust that it is working in our lives, and it will come to pass in every situation.

Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm… These are the inner spiritual blessings of God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that bring wholeness to our souls by acting upon our minds and our emotions and our will. Through being made one in spirit with Jesus our minds are able to receive the wisdom of God in all situations, and our emotions can likewise receive his peace and joy. And through the softening ofour hearts by his love we are moved to lovingly surrender our wills to the Father’s will for our lives in all situations.

The threat to humanity by the devil is not the risk of what he can physically do to us. The threat is being blinded by unbelief to the goodness of God which can make us become fearful that the devil has the power to stop God from having our best interest at heart. The devil does not control my destiny – God does. This is about growing in the knowledge of God and having faith and trust in his personal and loving intentions for us. This kind of faith is the only way we can get to know God personally. We are not waiting for our so called ‘goodness’ to operate, but his goodness. 2 Cor 10:4 ‘For the weapons of our warfare do not operate through our human nature but they are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God…’ We are not weakly struggling against a powerful dark force but firmly aligning ourselves with the powerful force of God. Let God arise and his enemies be scattered.

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THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL

In John Chapter four when Jesus sat by the well and asked a woman for a drink of water and then offered her the wellspring of everlasting life he gave her healing for the emotional thirst of her soul and an understanding of the Father’s love for her. She had entered a new life of hope and faith that was to last forever. Then his disciples arrived with food for them all to share. 

John 4:27 The disciples were surprised to find Jesus talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why, or what they had been discussing. Then the woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village and told everyone, "Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did! Can this be the Christ?"  So the people came streaming from the village wanting to see him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus to eat. "No," he said, "I have some food you know nothing about." "Who brought it to him?" the disciples asked each other. Then Jesus explained: "My food comes from doing the will of God who sent me, and from finishing his work. 

Just as Jesus had taught the woman at the well the difference between spiritual thirst and natural thirst Jesus was now about to teach his disciples the difference between spiritual hunger and natural hunger. He explained that his spiritual food was the energy that empowered his soul to live a life of surrendering his will to the will of his Father. What Jesus was saying to them was this. ‘I don’t need any natural food right now, as I have just been nourished and energised by doing what the father wanted me to do here in this place, and there’s more here yet for all of us to do’. Jesus knew that the crowds of Samaritans from the village were on their way and that he and his disciples would soon be ministering to them because of the woman’s testimony to them, and when Jesus saw the people running down the hill he said to the disciples.

Vs. 35 ‘Do you think the work of harvesting will not begin until the summer ends four months from now? Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us and are white and ready now for reaping.’

Jesus told them that they didn’t have to wait the usual four months between the sowing and reaping seasons of the harvest but that a spiritual harvest was ready now for reaping. That’s like saying to people in these days ‘Don’t say only one hundred and twenty more shopping days till Christmas – your Christmas presents are waiting for you now. When Jesus spoke about the fields already showing the white ripe harvest it has been commented that he was describing the stark visual image that the disciples saw happening in front of them at that very moment as the hordes of white robed Samaritans streamed from the village and ran down the hillside to meet Jesus. Many Samaritan men even today on religious occasions wear what is called a Jallaba - a long white gown that has 22 buttons down the front.

Vs. 40 When they came out to see him at the well, they begged him to stay at their village; and he did, for two days, long enough for many of them to believe in him after hearing him. Then they said to the woman, "Now we believe because we have heard him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Saviour of the world."

This was a time when many people of the nation of Samaria received and believed in the hope of salvation from God himself through the man that they now acknowledged as ‘The Christ’. In their Aramaic version of the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) their word for Messiah was ‘taheb’, and we read in Deuteronomy that Moses had spoken to Israel about sending another prophet/saviour/taheb like himself at an appointed time. Moses said this just before he died and just before Israel crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 18:15-18 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet/taheb like me from among you, from your brothers, and it is to him you shall listen…

Moses was not talking about Joshua, Jeshua, but about Jesus, Jeshua – The Saviour of the world, and when Israel went into the promised land Joshua set up the tabernacle of Moses on mount Gerizim, and this makes the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritans from the village at Mount Gerizim that day a very significant fulfillment of prophecy for those Samaritans. 

The Samaritans had always held to this hope of salvation and the hope was made alive again when they met Jesus their Taheb (Christ/Messiah) and they acknowledged him as ‘saviour of the world ‘. They then spent two days hearing him speak to them face to face at the village at Gerazim. Their hope in his salvation had to remain as a hope in their hearts until later on when we read in the Book of Acts that Philip the deacon/evangelist went to Samaria to preach the Gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus to them and they saw the miraculous works of God through Philip that followed his preaching.

Acts 8:4 But the believers who had fled Jerusalem went everywhere preaching the Good News about Jesus! Philip, for instance, went to the city of Samaria and told the people there about Christ… 9 A man named Simon had formerly been a sorcerer there for many years; he was a very influential, proud man because of the amazing things he could do--in fact, the Samaritan people often spoke of him as the Messiah… 13 Then Simon himself believed and was baptized and began following Philip wherever he went, and was amazed by the miracles Philip did. 14 When the apostles back in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God's message, they sent down Peter and John, and as soon as they arrived, they began praying for these new Christians to receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet he had not come upon any of them. For they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw this--that the Holy Spirit was given when the apostles placed their hands upon people's heads--he offered money to buy this power. "Let me have this power too, “he exclaimed hungrily, “so that when I lay my hands on people, they will receive the Holy Spirit!" This man Simon was severely rebuked by Peter, who discerned the pride and corruption in Simon’s hunger for the power of the Holy Spirit, and Peter told Simon that he could have no part in any of this for his heart was not right with God. 

When Jesus and the disciples met with the white robed Samaritans who had run down the hill and then spent time with them in that Samaritan village the disciples learned firsthand from Jesus the lesson of the spiritual food that was the energy that empowered the hungry soul to live a life of surrendering the will to the will of the Father. They were taught by Jesus at that time that the authority and power that they would receive on the day of Pentecost through the Holy Spirit would not come from a hunger for power, (as we saw with Simon the sorcerer) but from a hunger to do the will of the Father in the laying down of their lives for others. (Matthew 20:20).

In these days where mental and emotional fatigue is being felt by so many, the spiritual food that sustains our souls and releases the power of God in our lives comes by the readiness to surrender our will to the good will of God as well as the doing of his will. That readiness and that doing it comes about by keeping our mind not on our power (try and keep that out of the picture) but on God’s power which is always supernaturally at work for God’s greatest good as we faithfully serve God and sacrificially serve others in this way.  God does not give us his supernatural power to achieve our own objectives but to achieve his, and some present-day practices of presuming the power to gain financial prosperity and personal miracles simply by claiming a Scripture verse can lead to errors that corrupt the integrity and character of leaders and congregations. This has sadly been the case in the Western Church and in some parts of Asia for many years. Jesus said ‘It is the Spirit that gives life - The words that I speak are spirit and they are life’. It has to be more than simply words we read. (John 6:63)

There are even misleading doctrines that teach that God has delegated all authority to us and that he needs us to pray for things before he is able to work them from Heaven.  What God has given us is authority and power over the works of darkness and deception as we ‘do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God’ (Micah 6:8), and ‘become transformed by the renewing of our minds to know the good and acceptable and perfect will of God’ (Romans 12:2).

We can cry out to him in our suffering, press upon him in our times of need, plead to him in our appeal for justice, and we can be assured that in all these things he hears us. Why not then in all these things yield to him and say not my will but yours be done? How much better is this than scrambling our minds with one anxious thought after another searching for answers, or conjuring up guesswork about the future with our imaginations? How much better is this also than exerting our willpower to make decisions based on emotional reactions to circumstances rather than surrendering our will to the certainty that God’s wisdom will be forthcoming as we wait for his peace to settle our soul? The greatest power that we are given access to is the power of God’s love to us and through us, back to God and on to other people. There is no more worthwhile way to spend time with God than to engage with him in thanking him for his love. This is a response of faith to his continual active loving of us - and this faith pleases him and is our way of loving him back. When we engage with God in this way we are feeding the spiritual hunger with the food that satisfies and energises our souls.

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THE THIRST OF THE SOUL John 4:1 When Jesus left Judea and returned to Cana in Galilee he had to go through Samaria on the way, and around noon as he approached the village of Sychar, he came to Jacob's Well, located on the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jesus was tired from the long walk in the hot sun and sat wearily beside the well.

Jesus was travelling purposefully through Samaria on his way from Jerusalem to Cana which was unusual for a Jew because Jews always took the longer journey on the flat terrain along the western side of the Jordan river instead of going over the steep area of Mount Gerizim through Samaria. They did this because they always avoided associating with the Samaritans whom they regarded as gentiles. However, Jesus was being led by the Holy Spirit and waiting for whatever purpose his Father had in mind for him in Samaria.

Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink. He was alone at the time as his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised that a Jew would ask a ‘despised Samaritan’ for anything - usually they wouldn't even speak to them, and she remarked on this to Jesus. He replied, "If only you understood what a gift God has for you, and who I am, you would ask me for some living water!" "But you don't have a rope or a bucket," she said, "and this is a very deep well. Where would you get this living water? And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? How can you offer better water than this which he and his sons and cattle enjoyed?"

Let us look at what is happening behind the words that are being spoken here. Jesus had asked the woman for a drink of water, much to her surprise, and she became defensive about being a ‘despised Samaritan’, but to her further surprise Jesus in return offered her the gift of living water.  The woman backs away from his offer by commenting that he doesn’t have a rope or bucket and she questions him as to where he would get this living water that is supposedly better than what Jacob’s well has to offer, and she then needles Jesus about thinking he might be greater than their ancestor Jacob. Jesus calmly disregards her awkward reactions and begins to explain to her the difference between natural thirst and spiritual thirst, which leads to the further discussion of the difference between natural spring water and the supernatural living water (zao hydor) of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus replied that people soon became thirsty again after drinking this natural water. "But the water I give them," he said, "becomes an everlasting spring within them, watering them forever with everlasting life." At this stage the woman becomes curious about the living words of Jesus and the living water, and she wants to know more.  "Please, sir," the woman said, "give me some of that water! Then I'll never be thirsty again and won't have to make this long journey to keep getting water." Jesus had seen into the woman’s heart of unfulfillment and the emotional brokenness of her soul, which was the real thirst in her life.

"Go and get your husband," Jesus told her. "But I'm not married," the woman replied. "All too true!" Jesus said. "For you have had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now."  "Sir," the woman said, "you must be a prophet”.         She warily acknowledges that Jesus is a prophet and that he knows everything about her. Jesus begins to speak to her wounded soul because of her history of emotional unfulfillment with men. She realizes for the first time in her life that she is hearing from the living God - through a man – a very different kind of a man to any she had ever known.  However she stalls again, and diverts Jesus with a controversy about the Samaritans offering better worship than the Jews. 

Please tell me why it is that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?" 

After Israel entered into Canaan the Promised Land, Joshua erected the tabernacle of Moses on Mount Gerizim in Samaria and some of them, from the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim and Levi chose to settle there and adhere to the teaching of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. They did not follow Joshua and the rest of Israel into the times of the Kings and prophets and poetic psalms, where God set the vision for Israel of the coming of the Messiah and where God directed Solomon to build him a temple in Jerusalem. 

The Samaritans eventually became part of the diversity of nations that mixed among the separated northern tribes of Israel that had split off from the tribes of Judah. The northern tribes were involved in a complexity of political alliances involving Assyria and Persia and Egypt and Babylon and were finally dispersed among the various nations. However, the Samaritans remained and continued on in the land of Israel when Judah was taken into captivity in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. They believed that Samaritanism was the true religion of ancient Israel, and they preserved an Aramaic interpretation of the Torah.  When Judah had fulfilled their seventy years of captivity in Babylon and God led them back to Jerusalem he instructed the prophet Ezra to reinstruct them in the Hebrew record of the Torah and to remain faithful to his teaching. The Samaritans believed that Ezra altered and amended the teaching of the Torah that was brought back by those returning from the seventy-year captivity and that Israel had lost its way, and this caused the lasting enmity between the Samaritans and Israel.

Jesus then redirects the conversation with her to the difference between external religious worship and the prophetic hidden truth of true worship, where the Holy Spirit joins us to the life of the Father through Jesus. This wasn’t yet a life experience for anyone other than Jesus.

Jesus said. "The time is coming, dear woman, when we will no longer be concerned about whether to worship the Father here on this mountain or in Jerusalem. For it's not where we worship that counts, but how we worship--is our worship spiritual and real?  For God is Spirit, and we must have the truth of the Holy Spirit with us to worship as we should. The Father desires this kind of worship from us. But you Samaritans know so little about the Father, worshiping without understanding, while we Jews know about him, for salvation comes to the world through the Jews” (Actually as the womb and the cradle forJesus the ultimate Jew).

The woman said, "Well, at least I know that the Messiah will come--the one they call the Christ--and when he does, he will explain everything to us." Then Jesus told her, "I am the Christ!"

This woman received heart to heart counselling from ‘the Christ ‘on that day - from the weary traveler Jesus the living God who did more than just tell her about her past pain and suffering, he created for her a new future with a new hope. When God reveals to us who he is and who we are with him beside us, we forget about everything else. God is at then work and our soul is comforted and at rest.

She had had her emotions confused and damaged through her instinctively seeking emotional comfort and fulfillment in the companionship of men. The Samaritan men that she had known had not provided this fulfillment for reasons of which we are not told, except to note that Jesus did not appear to remark about these things to judge her but to show her that she was important to God as a person and in spiritual need of an emotional healing to her soul. Jesus felt and understood the compassion and love that is ordained for his Father’s daughters, and he cared about the painful details that had emotionally drained her soul dry, and he was offering her a new hope which would give new meaning to her life.  Deep in the heart of all human beings is the desire for fulfillment through kinship and oneness. Her pursuit of this good desire had failed not because of the desire but because of the desperate way she was pursuing it, and the men with whom she was pursuing it - six men but no husband – why?            This desire for kinship and oneness is fundamental to humanity because it is born out of that same desire in the heart of God the Father who wants to fulfill each one of us as his child with his love and peace and care and protection. He wants us to place him above all others, and to entrust him with our lives. True worship is the response of an adoring heart towards the One who is esteemed above all others, and in whom we desire to entrust our lives. And Jesus had spoken to her about this in his discussion with the woman.  ‘For God is Spirit, and we must have the truth of the Holy Spirit with us to worship as we should. Because The Father desires this kind of worship from us.’  Jesus was teaching her to respond to the desire of the Father for us to have that kind of trust in him, as it is his desire to fulfill us with his love and peace and care and protection. She needed to know how the Father saw her in his eyes, and she needed to believe and trust in that, rather than in how she saw herself in her own eyes in her sad desolation. The Holy Spirit had been working to reveal Jesus to her and working together with Jesus for him to reveal the Father to her.

Just then his disciples arrived with the food. They were surprised to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why, or what they had been discussing. Then the woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village and told everyone, "Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did! Can this be the Christ?"  So the people came streaming from the village to see him. She ran off leaving her past behind, as well as her water jar. That day she represented the first utterance of God to the Samaritans in all of history. She had been chosen by God to be given a foretaste of a prophetic message of something that he would later teach his disciples when he said he would send them the Holy Spirit, because he was going to his Father(John14) After the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost the Apostles prayed continually to keep being filled with the Holy Spirit, and they taught us to do the same, and to believe that we keep on receiving. He is our well, our fountain of everlasting life, the comfort for our weary or wounded souls, and as we sit patiently and still by the well of life with him we drink of his Holy Spirit and are given new hope and joy. Let us continually ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit and let this love and peace and joy satisfy our thirsty souls.

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YOUR KINGDOM COME

Romans 14: 16. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven is the realm of God’s authority and power and order which expresses the love and unity and agreement that exists between the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In this Scripture the word righteousness speaks of our alignment in heart and mind with the Kingdom of God in Heaven. People living this Kingdom life in the earth experience and display the love and peace and joy that reflects the nature of the Kingdom of God in Heaven.

Paul wrote to the Church in Rome which had a great diversity of national and cultural and religious persuasions to encourage them to flow in the love and unity that reflected the nature of the Kingdom of God in Heaven. He warned them to not judge one another because of their cultural and circumstantial differences but to accept and honour the intentions of each other’s hearts to live for God and not to live just for themselves.

Romans 14:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't have the same opinion as you about serving God. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with— One person has faith to eat anything, while the weak in faith eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him, even when it seems that he is strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

He explained to them that God could handle these differences that came from the variety of religious persuasion and upbringing of each one because he sees what is in the heart toward himself and that is what he measures and accepts. God does not endorse our personal opinions, but he validates our obedience and sincere intention to please and honour him in our conscience. Our conscience is continually being purified by faith as we desire to walk closer with him in all we think and do. As we live with a heart of love for the truth of who God is and who we are we receive clearer revelation of the knowledge of God and his Word.

Paul told them that if a brother or sister is committed to following a certain religious exercise of practising something or abstaining from something that they were taught to observe and we cause them distress by flaunting our faith and telling them they should have the freedom to do what we do, we are not acting in love. And more than that – we are not reflecting God’s Kingdom of Heaven in the Earth.

Romans 14: 16. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ this way is pleasing God and not causing offence to their brothers and sisters. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

Our humanity seems to be hardwired from an early stage in life to detect unfamiliar differences in people other than what we grew up with, and to be threatened by anything that falls too far away from under our kindred tree, and that is not unusual.

That has been the cause of divisions and conflicts in this world throughout history, but the Church has been given the very Spirit of wisdom and grace to model the answer to this conflict and division everywhere, and that answer is our oneness in Christ. Paul encouraged the Church to grow in maturity and love and an openness of heart and mind to learn to accept and appreciate the blending of our circumstantial differences such as race and gender and status and culture because in God’s eyes. we are really all the same 1Corinthians 12:12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.

We see the differences and contend with each other and judge one another, even for the slightest degrees of difference of opinion or practice. God sees and appreciates those differences in us, which he himself planned for us to have and to be expressed through his Spirit. Jesus lived through this human experience of being treated as an outsider and even an outcast and lived this judgement upon himself by others every day of his life till the day he died - on the cross– for us.

Jesus knows each one of us intimately, Spirit to spirit, human to human. He understands the unique potential and aspirations we each have, and the misunderstandings and the hurts we have all suffered because of our differences, and he understands completely. Jesus loves us through all of this and he told us that we are each loved by Father God as much as he was, as he said in the following prayer; John 17:22 that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

This needs to be reinforced and sustained by the revelation of the truth that each one of us is accepted fully as we are, along with our differences and limited understanding, and half formed opinions, and the imperfect formation of our thinking by sincere but imperfect teaching of Biblical doctrines and practice.

Otherwise, we are left with the fact that while God sees us as One in Christ, we see one another as outsiders, the way the apostle Peter saw the Gentiles as outsiders through his Jewish lens. Peter was reluctant to even enter the house of the Gentile Centurion Cornelius, let alone present the Gospel to him, but when he did enter and present the Gospel the Holy Spirit did the rest in very quick time, and Cornelius and his whole household entered the Kingdom (Acts 10:44).

So as we have just seen, learning the ‘one in Christ’ reality was a very difficult journey for the early Church, as it is for us today, but escaping that journey is not an option for God’s Kingdom to come ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’ (Matthew 6:10).

This revelation of oneness together in God’s love has to start somewhere. It can start simply by being willing to put other things aside in order to spend time seeking God’s grace to believe in the fulness of his love for us. I believe it must be the grace of God for if I try in my own strength to reason with myself about how much I deserve or don’t deserve that love I just go around in circles in my mind, but when I get the grace of God to believe it there also comes a peace which is above all understanding and reasoning. I then stand against letting the devil rob me of the confidence I have of being loved by God and loving him back. We can then have confidence that his love and goodwill will flow out to others. That is the beginning of love and oneness, the first fruits of God’s Kingdom on earth.

It may seem passive to be waiting on God in stillness, but submitting to God’s working in us this way is really an active response to God in faith. In this stillness our intellect gets starved of its hungry appetite for more knowledge and it complains bitterly just as our body does when it is starved of food, but just as a bodily fast can bring wholesome results, a soul fast of our intellectual busyness yields unparalleled spiritual health and wholeness. Our will yearns for decision making and action so that it can be in control of our circumstances and it feels starved also when the soul is put on this kind of fast. When we do this we yield control to God in surrendering to his loving reordering of our circumstances for his purposes for our lives.

Jesus taught us to pray ‘Your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’. We can enter into the heart of Jesus in this prayer for the Kingdom and hope to be a part of the answer to it in these days in which we live. We can allow his Kingdom power to be expressed in the reordering of our minds and the intentions of our hearts to accept his love and to love one another. This journey begins on earth but continues in eternity. Love never ends.

I have seen some grand moves of the Holy Spirit in my time, and my notion of the next move is that Holy Spirit would rain down and soften our hearts by his love and give us ears to hear one another and eyes to see one another and hearts that feel for one another as one in Christ, and so reflect the love and unity and agreement of his Kingdom in Heaven. This flood of grace from Heaven could melt our hearts and bestow upon us a humble innocence that heals our souls. And then we might just get to take that healing power into a broken world. May your Kingdom come Lord and may that healing rain fall.

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ENTERING THE KINGDOM

Luke 4:42 Early the next morning Jesus departed from the people so he could be in a solitary place, but the crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them but to stay at Capernaum. But he replied, "I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places too, for that is why I was sent." Jesus kept talking about a Kingdom, and people wanted to know what this Kingdom was, especially the religious leaders and the Pharisees – Where was it? – When would it come? – What did it look like? Jesus’ answer to them was that His Kingdom was not in a geographical place, and you couldn’t plan its arrival with a calendar or describe its outward appearance as a visible organization. He said it was not an external system but an internal reality. He said it was in us and amongst us - something shared between us and God and us and one another. Luke17:20,21 When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Jesus was underpinning that ‘within you’ life as he withdrew into the place of solitude with his Father as we saw in the opening Scripture and he would be fortified by his Father’s love which then flowed forth from him to the people. Jesus was telling them that he was bringing in a Kingdom that was not a place but rather a realm of God’s supernatural activity and order which was to operate here and now within those who had surrendered their authority to God’s authority and their will to God’ will. They would be people who have desired that their human nature be transformed by God’s nature of love and justice and mercy so that the power of that Kingdom within would not be corrupted like the power of the kingdoms of the world.

When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the temple guards, he was tried by the Jewish High Priest and the council of elders and then handed over to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor of Judea. When Pilate questioned Jesus about being King of the Jews he asked him why he had been tried by his own people and why they had brought him to a Roman Governor for trial. He asked Jesus what he had done, and why was he claiming he was their king. Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting for me and not allowing me to even be put on trial. But my kingdom is not of this world.”-Jesus also added that if God had not willed for this to happen then Pilate would not have had any authority to put him on trial (John 18:36 ff)

Jesus did not ever urge his disciples to protest against Roman authority or consider any hostility towards Roman rule. They were all convinced that the Kingdom would be an outward Kingdom ruled over by Jesus, and that the Roman Empire would be overthrown and that they would rule alongside of him with great power and authority. But Jesus did not come to try and change the outward kingdom in which his disciples lived; he came to establish the kingdom that would live within them. He said to them once when he was given a Roman coin ‘whose face do you see on it?’ and they said to him ‘Caesars’ and he said to them ‘therefore give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’. That day Jesus established the principle of the separation between Church and State. Jesus went on to say that they could not behave like the Roman rulers, or their own religious leaders who use their authority and positions of power to dominate others to get what they want out of them. There was one occasion when the mother of James and John asked if her sons could sit next to Jesus on his throne, one on the right hand side and one on the left, when he established his Kingdom. It became clear by the reaction of the other disciples of anger and resentment at the two brothers that all of them were coveting some special place in the order of this new Kingdom that would be happening any time soon. Matthew 20:24 And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers.

He told them that what they were all wanting for themselves was not even his to give. He said that Father had given them all to him, and that Father alone gives place and position as he sees fit. He said that if they were to follow him then they must follow all the way. He told them that true authority was serving one another, not competing with one another, and that he had been sent to serve, not to be served, and to lay down his life for others. That day they learned a lot about God and a lot about themselves and a lot about the Kingdom.

Jesus had to correct their tendency towards the power plays of political zealotry and activism, some of them more than others. Peter would not be slow in lopping off the ear of the temple guard when Jesus was being arrested on the night he was betrayed by Judas, and Judas was the most zealous political activist of all who was bitterly disappointed when he realized that Jesus had planned no imminent earthly Kingdom. Those two brothers James and John whose mother wanted a place for them on the left and the right-hand side of the throne of Jesus were also quite happy one day to ask Jesus to let them bring judgment upon the Samaritans, their political and religious opponents by hurling some fire from Heaven against their rejection of Jesus’ message. Jesus rebuked them and said ‘you don’t know what spirit you are of. (Luke 9:54).

Many Christians today have a similar zealous political activism to that of those disciples, and it is a common and understandable misunderstanding to have, because of the indignation that rises up in all of us when we see the corrupt power plays in the politics of this day. Jesus had to correct his disciples and prepare their hearts and minds to live in the power of a Kingdom within them rather than seek the power in an earthly kingdom around them.

There are many Christians that believe that the Church will reorder every political and commercial and educational institution and every family and relational arrangement in the earth and bring it under God’s rule so that Jesus can return to a Kingdom of God on the earth that is ready and waiting for him to take up his rule. We can certainly have a transformative influence upon the political and civil landscape when called upon to speak or act in a way that honours God and shines light into darkness in a situation that God has ordained for us. However, the Bible is clear that we cannot achieve a perfected earthly kingdom in this age where every kind of corrupted kingdom authority contests the Word and the ways of God to maintain its flawed and limited power base, and the Bible says we are not here to judge the world – that is for him (1Cprinthians 5:12). The Kingdom of God cannot be perfected until Jesus returns from Heaven to put down all rebellion in the earth and in the heavens. 1Corinthians 15:24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

And at that time, it will come to pass; ‘that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9).

We finally take our place with him in a New Kingdom of a New Heaven and a New Earth. Until the time of his return, we live in an age where every kingdom on earth is being shaken. The only Kingdom that cannot be shaken is the Kingdom of God that is dwelling within us. (Hebrews 12:28)

God’s Kingdom is the experience and the influence of a community of people that love God and love one another. The other world is the world of division, competition, self-advantage and independence from God.

Jesus asks us to choose what world and what kingdom we will be active in. Jesus asks us how much we care for him, and how much we care for one another.

God wants us to attract people to His Kingdom, and The Holy Spirit will take the love that we actively pour into being with God and with one another and he will draw people towards that love. We are creating a Kingdom community for people to come into, not encouraging anxious or pushy or demanding people with political agendas but growing people with a simple and meaningful walk of faith in God, not trying desperately to impress the world but seeking to care for a broken world that God wants to heal with his love.

The Holy Spirit is working within us to make us willing to do whatever The Father puts before us each day, in the big things and the little things. If we provide the willingness, He will provide the grace and love and the power to do. He will give us wisdom in ethical and moral decisions that change lives. He will give us strength to be there for someone else and help carry their load. He will comfort us in our affliction so that we can comfort others in theirs. He will demonstrate to the world that the Kingdom is here and now and in those who have truly entered into it because of their love for one another. Then others can be brought in. Jesus came to bring in The Kingdom. He will come again to complete it.

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SEEING AND NOT SEEING

This story shows us how differently we can live our lives if we see things as they truly are in the realm of the spirit and not shrouded by darkness, the darkness of the world. The story, from 2 Kings ch.6, starts off with the king of Syria trying to plot his misguided strategies of war against Israel. Every time he plans to ambush Israel’s army in a certain place, Elisha is told by God what is going on and he warns the king of Israel so that he is always ready for action.

2Kings 6:17 Once when the king of Syria was at war with Israel, he told his officers to mobilize their forces at such and such a place (naming the place). Immediately Elisha warned the king of Israel, "Don't go near such and such a place (naming the same place) for the Syrians are planning to mobilize their troops there!" The king sent a scout to see if Elisha was right, and sure enough, he had saved him from disaster. This happened several times. The king of Syria was puzzled. He called together his officers and demanded, "Which of you is the traitor? Who has been informing the king of Israel about my plans?" "It's not us, sir, “one of the officers replied. “Elisha, the prophet, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of your bedroom!" "Go and find out where he is, and we'll send troops to seize him, “the king exclaimed. And the report came back, “Elisha is at Dothan." So one night the king of Syria sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city of Dothan. When the prophet's servant got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. "Oh no Master, what shall we do now? “he cried out to Elisha. "Don't be afraid! “Elisha told him. for those who are with us are greater than those who are with them. “Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes and let him see! “And the Lord opened the young man's eyes so that he could see horses and chariots of fire everywhere upon the mountain! As the Syrian army advanced upon them, Elisha prayed, “Lord, please make them blind. “And he did. Then Elisha went out and told them, “You’ve come the wrong way! This isn't the right city! Follow me and I will take you to the man you're looking for. “And he led them to Samaria! As soon as they arrived Elisha prayed, “Lord, now open their eyes and let them see. “And the Lord did, and they discovered that they were in Samaria, the capital city of Israel! (at that time) When the king of Israel saw them, he shouted to Elisha, “Shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?" "Of course not! “Elisha told him. “Do we kill prisoners of war? Give them food and drink and send them home again." So the king made a great feast for them and then sent them home to their king. And after that the Syrian raiders stayed away from the land of Israel.

This story of Elisha defending Israel from the attacks of the Syrian army unveils the activity of God in the world of the unseen against the enemy of darkness. God opened the eyes of Elisha to this supernatural realm to show him that God was in command of the earthly activity and that he would guide Elisha step by step to fulfill his Heavenly purpose for his people. The Bible tells us that we can be made aware of the tactics of our enemy the devil, and so prevent our minds and hearts from being emotionally overwhelmed by darkness and deception and fear. That understanding is of great encouragement to our faith especially in these present troubling times of global pandemic.

2Cor2:11 so that we are not outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices. Darkness will try to introduce fear which is a spiritual power. Fear fires up peoples’ imaginations and brings confusion and incites suspicion and division and unforgiveness. The devil tries to hijack the emotions to disrupt a normally ordered soul where it can go into reaction and become suspicious and fearful rather than trusting in God and acting wisely.

There are some things about seeing and not seeing that are worth knowing. Only God knows what is really going on in the realm of both the seen and the unseen. The devil does not know the future (if he did why let Jesus die on the cross). The devil cannot read our minds. (2chron ch.6) The devil can blind our minds by getting us into emotional reactions such as resentment, anxiety, fear, deception concerning half-truths and conspiracy theories, and harsh criticism of people who do not share the same opinions. These reactions do not help to solve the problem at hand, and they end up causing more emotional and mental and spiritual unrest than the problem itself. What does help is adopting a new mindset of faith in God (repentance). We can learn to consciously redirect our faith to the reality of God’s command over the situation and his supernatural work on our behalf in the world of the unseen.

Just as the prophet told his servant that there was a greater army with them than there was against them. Elisha had to pray that God would open the eyes of his servant to see the work of God in the unseen realm. The Bible tells us ‘Greater is he who is within you than he who is in the world (1John 4:4). He that is within us is Jesus working with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. He is our strength and he has overcome the darkness of the power of the world and only he can help us us to see what is happening as he sees it - in the unseen realm. God has not only allowed this global pandemic but he is using it to bring darkness and deception and corruption to the surface like never before in history. Everything will get to be seen for what it is as the Holy Spirit shines light upon the darkness and deception that is causing so much of the current chaos and disorder being seen in the world today. He that is in the world is Satan who brings darkness and chaos and disorder into this world to blind it to the reality of the supernatural work of God that he does on behalf of those who believe.

We are being called to stand still and see the salvation of The Lord. We can learn to quietly calm our souls and resist fear - and find faith. We can learn to resist the ambush of our emotions and order our minds. We can receive God’s love and wisdom into our hearts. (1John 4:18, 1Corinthians 1:30).

God’s love in our hearts will be seen through the practical caring or comforting response we can give to someone in distress in these present difficulties. It is also seen in our non combative response if we are personally criticised for our position on how we manage the current difficulties based on our faithfulness to God and to one another.

God’s wisdom in our heart will be seen through our personal responsibility in making decisions that support the well-being of others, especially those that are vulnerable.

God blinded the eyes of Elisha’s enemies so that they went into confusion and lost their way and had to give up their misguided plans as a lost cause. God opened the eyes of Elisha to what he was doing in the overall scheme of his purpose for Israel, and Elisha’s request was granted in opening the eyes of his friend who could not see what God was doing. This empowerment of God’s grace to us of having our eyes opened by God to see what he is doing and what darkness is doing is being given to us in these days as we faithfully wait upon God and trust him to have his way with us and through us in these troubled times. As God opens our eyes he will give us the prayer of faith to see eyes being opened in those in our world that we bring before him. In quietness and confidence will be your strength.

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AN ERA OF HOPE AND PEACE Forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem at that prescribed time for dedication and purification according to Jewish Law. A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King, which was Simeon’s lifelong prayer, forever waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, The Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and began praising God. ‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29) On that day this prophetic man Simeon took his place in entering the era of new hope and peace that had come upon all of humanity.

Joseph and Mary stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus. Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her blessed child; ‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. This momentous prophesy declares Jesus as the one who stands at the centre of the scales of every life, where we weigh the major decisions of our lives. This challenges us to either respond to or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his perfect life, his voluntary sacrificial death and his glorious resurrection. These truths are the challenges that provoke opposition and denial in the human heart, where all inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart to account. Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind, and sadly ignored.

A woman named Anna was also there in the Temple that day, a prophetess of the Jewish tribe of Asher, and was eighty four years old. She lived a cloistered life in the Temple, dwelling there night and day, worshiping God in praying and often fasting. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and The Spirit gave witness to her spirit that this was the promised Saviour and that the Messiah had finally arrived. She began thanking God and proclaiming this truth of hope to everyone in Jerusalem. She too had now entered the era of hope and peace that had come into the world.

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East, and they were asking about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts. Babylon was the first civilization in the East from 700 BC to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets (wandering stars). They would study any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. They had been following an exceptionally bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem.

These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel, and many scribes and teachers knew from the Scriptures the Bethlehem region of the child’s birth; Micah 5:2, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will abandon his people to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last his fellow countrymen--the exile remnants of Israel--will rejoin their brethren in their own land. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall be secure, for he will be greatly honoured all around the world. He will be our Peace

The presence of these men in Jerusalem and the line of questioning and discussion they were having with the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod The Great, who had been appointed by Caesar Augustus to rule the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he had become extremely agitated about the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he was threatened by it. He didn’t want that sort of competition. He had his own dynasty to create. Herod summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them there were vague reports about the general whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, deceitfully telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king. After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who seek to understand what it means to live a life shared with God. Gold speaks of the nature of God on display through the Holy Spirit in a human life. Frankincense speaks to us of prayer and praise arising out of a true heart. Myrrh speaks to us of the necessary reality of suffering, and its meaning for our life, as we give thanks to God in all things, because without that there is no spiritual growth.

That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him. Herod had commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah; Jeremiah 31:15, In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss. So Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night. Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). However, when Joseph learned that Herod Antipas the son of Herod The Great, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. So they came and settled in a city called Nazareth, and another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult. Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man. The word ‘grew’ in that Scripture is the word ‘prokopto’ in the original language, and it is a military term which means ‘moving forward blow-by-blow’. The life of Jesus was a continual blow-by-blow journey of overcoming the self-centred nature of all of humanity from the time of Adam. Jesus bent back the crooked independent disposition of the Adam that still distorts the human heart in each one of us. He straightened out that bent and crooked nature and he straightens it out in us too and grows us as we walk into each blow-by-blow experience of our lives empowered by his enabling grace to call upon his strength in our constant experience of weakness.

During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year. The feast was always very crowded and lasted for seven full days and there was a lot of activity and celebration of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt, and they travelled to and from the feast in a caravan of hundreds of people, pitching tents and camping on the journey. When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was mingling with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, and when they couldn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only after three days of searching and making inquiries that they finally found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers of the Law, discussing deep questions with them and astounding everyone with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. However, his parents were perplexed, not knowing what to think, and his mother asked him in her distress why he had done that to them. Mary told him that she and his father had been frantic, searching for him everywhere. Jesus asked them why they felt they had to search for him and why they didn’t realize that he would be here in his Father’s house, sharing in his Father’s work. But they didn't understand what he meant. It could have appeared to be insubordination, which was puzzling and very uncharacteristic of him, to not respect his sonship in their family.

But Jesus had not betrayed his sonship. In this encounter with his distressed parents, this maturing child was wisely coming to grips with the complexity of the relationship between his identity as Son of God and as a son in the family of Joseph. He did this for us too, knowing we would grapple with this earthly and heavenly fatherhood quandary in our own lives, and would be made whole in Father’s unconditional love. So he went home with them and was subject to them. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and was admired and respected by all the people in that place.

Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life. This had never happened before, this new form of life, God and man together, a new creation. Because of this new creation a new connection between man and God would be possible. Through what this man would accomplish in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he would experience with his Heavenly Father would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family. And through this man a new hope would sit in the hearts of those who found the peace of that bond of oneness through their faith. The Bible says that faith is the basis of hoping – the assurance of the unseen activity of God. That hope blesses you because you can now live a life knowing that someone is personally thinking about you continually, working life out for you far better than you can for yourself. That is a living hope that lasts forever.

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THE CHRISTMAS STORY GOD WITH US

The appointed time finally came to heal the earth. It was twisted and torn and it could not heal itself. There were many religions apart from Judaism, and all the rituals, the pomp and ceremony, had only allowed that gap between God and man to remain. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. The Divine Being, Jesus God, was to make his transition from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from pure Spirit existence to human flesh existence.

Father had always planned that a new species was to be born into the earth. He had planned for his son to begin this new species of being, a Spirit species, a Spiritual species in the earth. Humanity has been known as ‘Homo Sapiens’ (Mankind +knowledge) – one who has knowledge and knows. But I believe that this new species that came into being at this time is ‘homo Divinicus’ (Mankind +God) – God with us. Now was the time for Jesus to go to earth as The Father’s Son, to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its sorrow and its lost hope, and to lift human life into a place of shared friendship with The Three in One. Jesus knew and had agreed before the beginning of time that this was to be the plan. He knew that it was the only way for the love of God to be known by humanity. Jesus knew that he would become the expression of that love in the most perfect way. Holy Spirit was to become a partner with Jesus in the completion of this glorious plan. It was not just Jesus God who would inhabit the earth, but Holy Spirit would also become a person of this planet by sharing every moment of life with Jesus, and in that way, he too would experience human life.

Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and He had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of their love and goodness and truth. He sent an angel to announce this amazing news to Mary. Gabriel entered the place where Mary slept. She awoke startled and afraid and sat upright, staring at the heavenly being. Gabriel motioned her to be still and stood quietly in her small room. Mary was told she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God the Son' and that she was to call him Jesus. She answered back that it was impossible and that she never been with a man. Gabriel told her that the birth of this Child will not have anything to do with Joseph, her betrothed, and that The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin. He told her that this was the will of Father God, and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, that they had chosen her to be the mother of this special child who would be the liberator of all mankind. Mary humbly surrendered her being to the magnificent will of God.

Meanwhile Gabriel visited Joseph in a dream also and told him that Mary had been chosen by God to give birth to a son, who would be ‘God The Son’. This was to be a divine work of The Holy Spirit who would cause a holy life to ignite within her being, and that this was the fulfilment of a prophecy in the Scriptures with which Joseph was familiar ‘A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14). Joseph awoke suddenly, and faith filled his heart, and he declared loudly to himself that there would be no shame, and that Mary would become his wife immediately - they would have this wonderful child and he would care for him as his earthly father.

In due course Gabriel put it into the heart of Caesar Augustus to do a census and register every person in the known world. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the conflict and chaos until she who is to give birth has her son. And he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord… and he will be greatly honoured throughout the world. He will be our Peace. Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven hundred year old prophesy of his birthplace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary and the journey was tiresome for Mary and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season. They did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place near where the animals slept and fed. He saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could. A mother sweated through her mother pain and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father. Loving mother hands washed the newborn child in a water trough. On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” Their singing of this new creation was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation – ‘When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4,7,8). When the singing had stopped and the angels had left they were guided to the place where this extraordinary and singular event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. This is how we get to ‘know God’. Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. 1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true. This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need, in any given situation and at any given time. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith. Christmas waits to be truly celebrated. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

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PEACE ON EARTH Luke 2:8 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly angels praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, goodwill toward men!” 

THE SIGN – life and growth A newborn baby, born from above (John 3:8) safely wrapped and cradled, ready for life and growth. God in Heaven could now be seen on earth in human form. It was the beginning of the plan of God to join his life to humanity and to live his life through those who believe in him. Jesus would live a life of struggle and challenge conquering evil and adversity as a forerunner on behalf of us who were to follow him. His eternal oneness with his Father gave the human spirit for the first time a new perspective of ‘aboveness’ – called transcendence which is not just a consciousness of being born from above but also a conscious experience of living from above.  He would die and rise again and send his Holy Spirit for his ‘born from above’ life to dwell in us. It is from this living from above life in people that peace on earth and goodwill toward men can occur. 

When we look at the Old Testament prophecy of Christmas (Isaiah 8:22-9:1) we see a world that was in great darkness waiting for a great light.  The background to this prophecy was something that was happening in real time for Israel as Assyria was about to attack them from the north, but Israel and their king could not accept God’s ways and his plans for them, and so they were left without hope.   Isaiah 8: 22. People will look up to heaven and down at the earth, but wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. They will be thrown out into the darkness. Chapter 9:1 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. There will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.  Those who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and His government and its peace will never end.

This prophecy would find its future fulfillment through Jesus the King of Kings that has fought and won the battle for our souls. The Christmas story for us is also a story of our spiritual victory through Jesus as a reality in our hearts and minds, as it conquers all darkness and fear in us and governs our hearts with peace. Over two thousand years on from that first Christmas we still see a world that is in great darkness waiting for a great light. The odd paradox is that the world celebrates Christmas each year while not understanding the miraculous significance of that great light. The events of great darkness that happen around about us become the signs that a caring God who wants only the best for his people is waiting to act on behalf of his people. And his people are also his signs of hope in today’s world, and when you exhibit that kind of hope people will want to know why (1Peter 3:15). 

OUTER DARKNESS AND INNER DARKNESS. Outer darkness is the manifestation of disorder and corruption and violence that is seen in the world where groups and individuals contend with each other in power struggles to dominate and do harm to others. This is being seen at present in the media and in politics and in personal relationships. Inner darkness is described in the Bible as the work of Satan who is called the ‘god of this world’ who uses deception to blind our minds to receiving the revelation of a loving and forgiving God in Jesus Christ.   The Christmas story is a message of God’s intervention of his great light into the lives of his people who are in times of earth-shattering distress and darkness.  That great light shines into the outer darkness and into the inner darkness so that we can see things as they truly are. At the present time God is bringing many things to the surface that have been hidden but are now being exposed so that they can be justly dealt with.

We saw in the prophetic Scripture from Isaiah that Jesus would be called the Prince of Peace and that the government would be upon his shoulders.  Jesus is showing himself in this way at this time in the world as he reorders our lives even in the midst of upheaval and loss and gives us his peace. Only he knows what things lay ahead as he determines the course of each day of our lives for us and we become drawn into his perfect will for us.  John 16:33 I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And Jesus spoke of two different kinds of peace, the peace of God and the peace of the world. John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. The peace of the world is not an inner lasting peace, but it is more like a short-term relief that a person feels because they have trust in their own skills and experience and financial reserves to control the circumstances in their world. These resources are effective against many threats and obstacles and hazards, but when the threats and obstacles and hazards overcome their resources their peace is gone.  The peace of the world is also the one-upmanship of having the upper hand against rival opposition when it comes against us. This is seen blatantly in the fragile peace of global politics and national security with its treaties and strategic alliances that are negotiated instead of having to stand alone. The peace that God gives us is not fragile and short-lived like the peace of the world. We never stand alone, as we trust in the alliance of ‘God with us’ in all things so that we never have to just depend upon our own resources in order to feel safe and secure.  Psalm 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust only in him, and he will act. God is always acting on our behalf in the world of the unseen. That is the essence of faith. That is the source of our peace.

We are not saved from facing the struggles and the adversity, but we are saved from having our souls being defeated and made to feel hopeless. That is what being saved is. He has overcome the world’s power to crush our souls. We are given grace to receive his peace and to administer that peace and good will to others, to be the Gospel of peace in a broken world. You were created to be ‘good news’ in different ways and at different times to different people by the grace that God has already made ready for you to step into.

Isaiah 26:12 – Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us (done = ordained – devised a plan). In other words, God has ordained, before the day starts for you, those times and places where God will meet you in your challenge and you will receive his peace and pass it on and it will be displayed in you as the good news of peace, the Gospel of peace, of the God of peace. Amen

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The father of John the Baptist, the priest Zechariah gave this prophecy regarding the ministry of his newborn son, John. Luke 1:76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall shine from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

John the Baptist lived within the awe of this promise of his destiny - preparing the way for the Messiah. He had drawn crowds out to where he had been living out in the desert regions on a diet of locusts and wild honey where the people listened to his preaching declaring that the Messiah was coming and that everybody had to repent. Then at the appointed time the Holy Spirit prompted him to make his way to Jerusalem to preach about the Kingdom of Heaven and repentance of sins, and he and his disciples began baptizing people in the Jordan River. Then on a certain day the Pharisees began questioning John about who he was because there were rumors abounding that he was the Christ or perhaps Elijah. All John would say was that he was one who was like a voice crying in the wilderness ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’ And the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me’ (John 1:29). Then John goes on to say, ‘I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:32)

And then the time came in John’s ministry where he knew he had to decrease and make way for Jesus to increase. When John baptized Jesus in the Jordan river and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him, an entirely new ministry of the Spirit started on the earth as Jesus went out into the wilderness in the power of the Spirit to be tested by the devil. In the plan of God to bring in the new wine of the Spirit the old had to pass away, so John had to pass away, literally. John was arrested and taken into the custody of Herod at the time that Jesus went out in the Spirit into the wilderness. When Jesus began to move out into his anointed ministry John started to become uncertain about many things as he languished in prison. He began to doubt whether Jesus was truly the Messiah, and he began to become concerned about his own future. We don’t know if John even comprehended the fact that Jesus would be resurrected from the dead even though at Jesus’ baptism he had said ’Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. The prophet John was told only what the Holy Spirit needed him to know. Matthew 11: 2 John the Baptist, who was now in prison, heard about all the miracles the Messiah was doing, so he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you really the one we are waiting for, or shall we keep on looking?" Jesus told them," Go back to John and tell him about the miracles you've seen me do-- the blind people being healed and the deaf who hear…and tell him about my preaching the Good News to the poor. Then give him this message, `Blessed are those who are not offended in me.'" Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 61:1 the words that were prophetic of his ministry as the Messiah, and these were words that John the prophet would have known very well. It is significant that Jesus did not mention the second half of that prophecy from Isaiah 61:1 which says ‘to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; And John was offended that Jesus had not set him free from prison.

John was disappointed and he began to lose trust in Jesus because he was offended! He would have had all kinds of ideas about how the kingdom of God would be ushered in, but those ideas had to be surrendered and die because he had only received a partial revelation of how the Kingdom would operate. Just like the disciples and anyone else who was waiting for Messiah to come, the expectation of Jesus the Messiah was that he would set up a powerful earthly Kingdom which he would reign over upon a throne in Jerusalem. John had to accept the yet unknown bigger plan for the kingdom of God, that Jesus would reign within us - even though John was the one chosen by God to go about telling people that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. John could have imagined himself as the prophet in the courts of the new King – who knows? His disciples went back and told him about their conversation with Jesus, John began to understand that he was not the one to live alongside Jesus but to simply prepare the way for him, he realized that he now should decrease while Jesus increased. And John’s reaction was, John 3:26 “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom (the Best Man), who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” John’s personal vision was dethroned. He remained the friend of the bridegroom but made way for the ‘alongside life’ of the bridegroom and his bride – the new Kingdom model of love and unity. That was a beautiful picture of Jesus and his bride that the Holy Spirit finally gave to John that emphasized the ‘two being made one’. That speaks of us as New Creation beings, made one in the Spirit in our ‘alongside life’ with Jesus.

Then Herod had John beheaded at the request of the daughter of Herodias because Herod was deeply offended at John because John had publicly rebuked him over his illegal marriage to Herodias, his brother’s ex-wife.

John was a prophet and both his life, and his death were prophetic for all who would be born into a new life with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. It would mean the decrease of self-life within us and the increase of the Jesus life within us in our new ‘God with us’ life. This ‘newness of life’ was destined for each individual who entered by faith into that new Kingdom life which was to come upon the earth after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Everything was about to pass away, and all things were to become new. We will go back to the time when Jesus told John’s disciples to tell John to not be offended in him. When John's disciples had gone, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds. Matthew 11: “When you went out into the barren wilderness to see John, what did you expect him to be like? Grass blowing in the wind, or were you expecting to see a man dressed as a prince in a palace? Or a prophet of God? Yes, and he is more than just a prophet. For John is the man mentioned in the Scriptures--a messenger to precede me, to announce my coming, and prepare the way for people to receive me. "Truly, of all men ever born, none shines more brightly than John the Baptist. And yet, even the lesser lights in the Kingdom of Heaven will be greater than he is!” After his praise of the powerful prophetic ministry of John, Jesus made the further astounding remark of the greater spiritual stature of every New Testament spiritual believer who enters the ‘KINGDOM WITHIN’ life. That life was to be greater than the spiritual stature of John for whom that Kingdom life was not available at that time. For while John had the most powerful anointing of any man in the earth besides Jesus, he was not joined in one Spirit to Jesus as would be those who would receive the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, and that includes us.

John had come to realize that as far as he and Jesus were concerned, he was just the ‘best man’ and that it is between the bridegroom, Jesus, and his bride, who are all those who live with him in oneness of Spirit. We now as his bride allow the Holy Spirit to take us on an alongside journey with him and at one with him in all that he does in our lives. Our life is now one of total trust in the one that walks alongside us.

John had to change his expectations because he had a misplaced expectation of Jesus that caused his own offence. People get offended with someone when that person does not live up to their expectations, to do for them what they want. And so will we have to change our expectations. It is no longer what we expect God should do for us, no matter how fervent the prayer is, nor is it us including Jesus in what we are doing, but it is Jesus including us in what he is doing. This becomes our new and absolute mindset of how to walk by faith, and this is what he expects of us. This becomes our repentance.

There might be an initial time of confusion for us as the full reality of a life with God begins to assume it’s real meaning for us, because that life challenges the autonomy and independence of our big plan for our own lives, even in our plan or vision of how we will serve God. We must surrender the old us and allow our ideas of our future to die in the same way that John had to decrease and even die to his plan for his future. We now make way for the new work of The Holy Spirit to take us on in our walk alongside Jesus in a heart-to-heart relationship of surrendered partnership. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit as a comforter, and the word ‘comforter’ is ‘paracletos’ which means ‘one who comes alongside’. This ‘alongside walk’ is the operation of the love of God that we yield to. It is now an ‘alongside’ life, and certain things in us must decrease so the expression of Jesus in us can increase.

God is not playing hard to get in this relational encounter - we are! And what excuse are we left with if we have been told the truth of his ongoing love and forgiveness for us? Is it that we are not interested or is it that we just cannot believe it or trust it to be true? The biggest error is in our being too busy and concerned about our own plans and opinions instead of becoming still and drawing near.

If we take a step back and look at our past hopes and disappointments, we might wonder why we may sometimes have feelings of being deprived, or that God has forgotten us and wonder why we have become disheartened. We have all had expectations that have not come to pass, and these may have been sincere intentions that were meant for good, but they were simply misplaced, or even mistimed. God honours our efforts to achieve those things we believe to be right for us just as he paid honour and tribute to his cousin John the Baptist.

But just like John, it is when we realize that what we pushed for, was not what God wished for, because he had something different and better. It is then that we realise that he resisted our efforts and outcomes just as we unwittingly resisted his grace to bring us alongside his blessed will for us. We also realise that many times we walked alone and did not walk alongside him. Paul said ‘I do not frustrate (athete?? -ignore or resist) the grace of God’. Paul did not make the error of letting busyness or self-concern hinder his becoming still and drawing near.

Now look at the smaller view and see what has happened today and yesterday in our efforts and how we may have neglected to be still and enquire and wait and trust the one that walks alongside us – because that is where miracles are and that is where they abound. His good will catches up with us in the end as we learn through failures and honest mindful retrospection to stop and return to being alongside him. Even though we are often uncertain in our steps forward because of our human frailty, we can be getting it right in his eyes as long as we are giving him thanks in every situation for; In everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you…’. Our attitude of faithful trust is that he is at work supernaturally in the world of the unseen to bring all things together for our good, despite our faltering steps. He can bring everything together in a very short time, and nothing is lost. The past is redeemed by our present moment faith for his work being done. He waits for us every moment to return to that NOW place of faith.

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"You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s." Exodus 20:17

In this final commandment episode, we discuss the following questions...

What is the link between this Commandment and with Commandment Nine, which says ‘do not bear false witness against your neighbor? And also what is the link between this one and Commandment One -‘I am The Lord your God have no other gods before me?

Many people seem to have a ‘the world owes me a living mentality’. Is there a resentful kind of coveting in this attitude? What about in people protesting for their special identity demands in society? Is this attitude linked to coveting?

In Romans 7, did Paul discuss a unique struggle with coveting specific to him, or is there a general principle? And how did the Commandment come alive to him and kill him?

What do you see as the transformational aspect of this Commandment in the New Testament Scriptures?

Paul tells us about his breakthrough in Philippians where he says he learned to be content…

Philippians 4 :11 I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content (safeguarded like a walled city). I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

God makes available a revelation of His grace, and the contentment that can be ours by accepting the godliness of our true self instead of an image we have constructed for our fulfilment.

The answer is taking hold of Commandment One which is always available and always the answer. It is always being at home with God where things work out okay just as they should because he runs that home and we are part of it.

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WAITING AND HOPING

The Book of Isaiah is a story of how God’s people live in hope, waiting for God. There are times that they start to trust in their own strength and turn away from him, and there are times when they are reminded to turn back to God, and when they do, they are mightily surprised by him, and it all comes into focus in this message in Chapter 30. God had been calling upon Israel for more than fifty years since the days of King Uzziah to take on a non-reactive role in international politics so that they could be given a new place of being God's spiritual representative as his servant to the world. and this role becomes clear in the later chapters of Isaiah, ‘arise shine for your light has come’ (Ch.60).

He called for a willingness on the nation's part to stop gazing out at the other nations and getting involved in their chaos and disorder and to rather search inward to find faith and to rest in God's grace and commitment to grow them and form them and do them good. He had said he would make them the head and not the tail, and that they would be above and not beneath (Deuteronomy 28:13). The world around them would then see that God was with them. God had his timing for Israel to position them in the best possible way and much would be expected of them, but they had to learn to hear God. In the following Scripture we see a cry from God’s heart to the people of Israel (and also to us). He was speaking through His prophet Isaiah, and He said:

Isaiah 30:15 For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says: Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength; but you'll have none of this. ‘No,’ you say. ‘We will get our help from Egypt; they will give us swift horses for riding to battle.’ But the only swiftness you are going to see is the swiftness of your enemies chasing you! 18 Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love; he will conquer you to bless you, just as he said. For the Lord is faithful to his promises. Blessed are all those who wait for him to help them. You shall weep no more, for he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. He will answer you. 20 Though he has given you the bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet he will be with you to direct you, and with your own eyes you will see. And if you leave God's path and go to the left or to the right, you will hear a voice behind you say, ‘No, this is the way’, so you can walk in it.

These words were said to God's people during a time when they had become tired of waiting for God to do something and were agitating to organize things for themselves. but God was waiting for them to do nothing! They were in a position where there was a fierce army from the north that was about to come and plunder them – and they were planning a political alliance with Egypt. But they had been told by God to wait for him to act on their behalf - 'In quietness and confidence you shall find your strength'. This would require quietness in the midst of turmoil, and trust that God would control the great forces that were devastating the world around them. That would be a braver and wiser kind of leadership than trying to control the politics of the day.

It is the same with us as his people in these challenging days we live in now. We don’t sit around passively but we let him position us in his way and in his time. There are good things that are God things that God has ordained for us to do and we need his wisdom to make the right decisions at the right time. The Holy Spirit teaches us that wise activity comes from a place of peace not emotional reaction or ambitious ideas that come from self-importance.

The final blessing in verse 18 is dedicated to those who are willing to listen and who wait. ‘Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love; he will conquer you to bless you, just as he said’. What Jesus conquers in us is our independence from him as a savior and friend and brother. God had engineered a situation for Israel in which no matter how much skill and ingenuity they thought they had, they were acting without his direction, and they were not only going to fail but they were going to make matters worse for themselves and come under God’s judgment. God does this kind of thing for a reason for all of us because there are some things that are just beyond us, beyond our ability to solve. But we still try – and we still fail. God is waiting for us to wait for him.

God assured Israel that he wanted to take them back again to a place of hope where he would look after them. He repeats to them that He will do good to them. He concedes that He has allowed them to go through tough times of adversity, and that He has even contrived it for a good reason, but that now it is time for rest and peace to come to them instead of anxiety, and that when they cry out to him, he will hear and act.

God is saying the same to us in this time of anxiety and uncertainty that has come upon the whole world, where there is strife and contention on many different levels. People are in conflict and causing offence to one another over things that once would never had bothered them, and the emotion that gets attached to the offences gets amplified by all forms of media to stir up political and relational strife in the community and even in families. It seems like everybody is waiting for something good to happen because too much bad and sad has happened, and they don’t know how to make the good thing happen because the world is broken and so are they. And God’s wants his people to know that they are not here to ‘fix’ the world but to bring healing to the souls of individuals and families and the community, to bring hope for those lives to become fulfilled and meaningful, trusting in a loving God. The hope is that God wills to do good at this time in this world for all that call upon him with a true heart, to bring rest for their souls, and it is only when we are in a place of peace that we can impart this living hope to those around us.

Philippians 4:6 Let your steadiness and calm be seen by those around you. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Does this Scripture mean that God will give us the answer to every prayer that we pray? No. This Scripture tells us to wait for the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. So why don't we wait? Well, just like Israel - we feel we can't just wait around and do nothing - we must solve the problem our own way and try to make something happen or maybe decree things in God’s name that he hasn’t authorized and then end up anxiously waiting to get the answer we want. We need to receive God’s peace first.

How does this peace give us hope? When we know that there is a person that we can trust in totally to look after all our needs and problems in the best way possible, we can be at rest and let them do what they know is best for us. That allows God’s peace to sweep over our souls. When we wait and receive that peace it becomes the signal that God has arrived on the scene. Suddenly, we see things in a different way – we lose our anxiety and fear, and we re-gather hope and expectation for things to change for the better – better than we could have ever planned for them to be. We can then live with the hope that he will surprise us with his outcome because his gift of peace guards our hearts and guides our minds saying to us; And if you leave God's path and go to the left or to the right, you will hear a voice behind you say, ‘No, this is the way’, so you can walk in it.

This becomes something that we learn, sometimes the hard way, that God waits for us to wait for Him, to give us his peace! God also loves to share that moment with us of showing us what he has done for us, and to reveal more of himself to us so that we can get to know him better.

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NOURISHING FAITH

The Apostle Peter died shortly after he wrote his second epistle and in the first verse of that letter he tells us that we have received ‘faith of equal standing with his (isotimos; of equal value or honour). He goes on to write about how that faith grows and brings forth the fruit of the true person that we were created to become. I see that being like a tree of life growing within us. It took many trials of faith for Peter to come into the fulness of that fruitful faith experience, and he wants to impart that experience to us in this epistle. He came from being a godly man under the Law who strived to say and to do the right things as a man of God, into becoming a man of faith who lived in the flow of God’s divine nature within. 2Peter 1:3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to (pros move forward to, bring about) life and godliness, through the (intimate personal) knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, through which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises (commitments), so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of wrong desires (epithymia). For this very reason diligently add to your faith virtue, (epichor??ge?? - nourish -vitalise the organic nutrients of the tree of life within you with) and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we add to our faith? Do we say we believe in Jesus and his death and resurrection and then having settled that, we start to become a better person by making an effort to becoming virtuous and gaining knowledge and being kind and trying to sacrificially love people? It could seem that this Scripture is saying this, and if that were the case we might as well have a Christian belief system and then live under the Law by doing our best to obey the Ten Commandments. Now that is not a bad thing to do and perhaps that is what James is saying when he says that ‘faith without works is dead’ (James 2:26), which could look like a contradiction to what Paul says. Romans 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone not by the works of the law. There is no contradiction. James and Paul are both saying the same thing, and so is Peter in this passage of Scripture - that everything in our Christian faith, from being forgiven and receiving the life of Christ and being made one with him through the holy Spirit depends upon our conscious dependence upon what he has done and is doing for us. Peter and James and Paul all assume that we will undertake to live a life in participation with God that produces the fruit of his Spirit within us. Faith is always about depending upon God while nourishing his divine activity within.

The following episodes of Peter’s life I am about to describe are not meant to disparage this Apostle of God, but they reflect to us how we too can struggle like Peter did, with all good intentions to be who God wants us to be. And like Peter we learn to realize that we can only be changed into who God created us to become, through a surrendered faith in the work of the Holy Spirit within us. That is the obedience of faith. Peter was a man of good intentions and great aspirations, a man who wanted to give everyone the best advice but who often didn’t know what he was talking about. He told Jesus that it was not God’s will for him to die on the cross. He said to Jesus, ‘No Lord, far be it from you, you’re not going to the cross’. Peter was also a man who wanted to be so friendly he would swap sides if being on the wrong side made him look bad to his other friends. When Peter visited Paul and Barnabus in the new gentile church in Antioch which they were growing, Peter accepted their gentile Christian lifestyle which was free from Jewish rules and regulations and rituals and was happy to share their expression of Christianity. That was until James and some other Jewish Christians decided to come and check out how things were going in this new church, and immediately Peter stopped eating with the gentile Christians and stopped associating with them and convinced Barnabus to do the same. Paul became incensed about this hypocrisy and berated Peter in front of all the other Apostles (Galatians 2:11).

Peter was a man of such self-conscious mood swings that he could say to Jesus ‘no you won’t wash my feet’, and then realizing his foolishness say, ‘please not just my feet but wash all of me’.

On one occasion Peter went with Jesus up onto a mountain with James and John where Jesus was transfigured, and his face shone like the sun. Moses and Elijah appeared, talking with Jesus in a bright cloud and Peter decided to break in on their discussion and he said to Jesus, ‘If you like, I would be happy to put up three tents here right now, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ Then from the cloud another voice broke in on Peter and said ‘This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, Listen to him!’ When Peter heard that he fell flat on his face on the ground, terrified.

Peter was a man who was so loyal to his religious opinions that he let his opinions give him permission to say no to God – ‘Not so Lord I can’t eat what you’ve offered me it’s religiously unclean’ (Acts 10:14). Peter was then told by God to preach the Gospel to a Gentile centurion called Cornelius, and he did so, but upon being invited into the man’s house the first thing he said was; ‘Do you know it’s not lawful for a Jew to enter a gentile house?’ Peter was a man who found it so difficult to control his emotions and reactions that after praying in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus, and continually nodding off to sleep, he lopped an ear off the guard who came to arrest Jesus for his trial, and he then ran and hid in the crowd and told people he didn’t know who Jesus was. Peter was a man who learned the hard way, and for many years to surrender in faith to God’s grace and his idea of who he was and who he could become and he humbly let God’s grace allow him to become that man God created him to be, beyond all of his good intentions and all his personal aspirations.

Peter’s life is a lesson to us of how not to become victims of our own strong opinions about who we are, who other people are and what is going on. We think we have opinions but often they really have us, and they’re mostly borrowed from other people anyway.

Peter went on to become a hero of faith. He became a man who humbly lived and spoke from the Tree of Life and not the tree of knowledge (which was mostly the religious knowledge of rules and regulations). Peter is telling us that the spiritual growth activities that he mentions in his letter from verse 3 will be brought about by the divine life of the nature of God in us. They are not a compulsory set of regulations enforced upon us in order to gain merit or favour or achieve some kind of status as a Christian. These are the overflow of the life principle (Divine nature) that spills into our heart and mind and soul and body from Jesus through the Holy Spirit. This is what our faith opens up for us and what flows out into the people and the world around us.

Do we dare to believe this? So what does faith do? How does this tree grow? For any plant to grow it needs good soil and sunshine and rain. The sunshine is God’s love – the universal energy that causes life to flourish. The rain is the Holy Spirit that joins us in oneness of the values of God’s mind and heart. The soil is our heart that is broken up and softened by the rain and the sun and by our desire to have that tree of life planted into our value system with real intention and aspiration. This is what makes our life one of fulfillment and joy, and all the while we are painfully aware of falling short but we give our best to this work of nourishing our faith and there is always the now to come back to.

Virtue; arete – The character traits of courage, honesty and integrity. We ask ourselves the question; Why will I not face this challenge of obedience to God? Am I avoiding this because of fear of failure or rejection? Am I taking shortcuts because no one is watching? If I fail I’ll feel ashamed. If the answer is yes, we can ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us that we can trust God to honour the smallest step of our yes to him even if it looks like there will be a cost to our yes of being opposed or of suffering disadvantage – for example admitting to getting something wrong with no excuses and taking the consequences. We will then see God honour his commitment to bring about his good and perfect will for us in the situation. We also learn in trusting God this way that he is purifying our conscience to see more clearly his right rather than being at ease with our own rationalisation of our actions. We the get to trust in our own heart with more confidence and so grow in faith.

Knowledge; gnosis - understanding of what is worthwhile knowing as far as growing in a living faith is concerned. Do I want to know spiritual concepts and doctrinal facts things because it gives me significance or influence with others? If yes, then we need to ask God about the things he wants to reveal to us about who he is and to trust the Holy Spirit to give us his wisdom from above so that we can know his will for our lives in order to make right choices. He will teach us by His Spirit and his Word what is worthwhile knowing, and also how to impart wisdom to others.

Self control; egkrates – Management of boundaries in our life. Do I want to live without boundaries in my life that limit my self-determination to do things my way or that limit my self-indulgence to have what I want? If yes, we can ask God to help us reorder the spiritual and moral priorities in our lives, starting with ourselves, and if we choose to live like that we become part of the reordering of the people and things around us.

Perseverance; hypomeno – abiding patiently under circumstances. Do I find myself impatiently complaining about the way things are or the way other people are and resisting rather than accepting the things that I cannot change? If yes, we can ask Holy Spirit to give us his grace to give thanks in all things – for this is the good will of a loving God for us, then he will reveal to us that he is working all things together for our good.

Godliness; eusebiea - spiritual focus, devotedness. Do I find myself being more attracted to the things of the world rather than to God? If yes, then we can ask The Lord to create in us a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within us. He will then touch us with his presence and purify our hearts so that we begin to see God in everything around us.

Brotherly kindness; Philadelphia - care and compassion. Do I find it is an irritation or an annoyance when I have to go out of my way to assist someone, and turn away or find reasons why I shouldn’t have to? (Good Samaritan) If yes, ask The Holy Spirit to help us understand the feelings of helplessness or heartache that another person is suffering. The blessing for us is that we will find the compassion and comfort of God coming upon us in abundance in our times of despondency.

Love; agape – selfless sacrificial love. Do I find myself not heeding what God says about what love is and what it is not? 1Corinthians 13:4 Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful, or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. If we knew how much we were loved by God we would find delight in heeding those words and living this life that he has given us and finding delight in loving and blessing others

Attending to this process of spiritual growth makes our life one of fulfillment and joy, and even though all the while we are painfully aware of falling short, we give our best to this work of nourishing our faith. When we fall short there is always the now to come back to. Faith only works in the now. We don’t go back to regretting what we got wrong, and we don’t make a resolution to try and get it better tomorrow. We come into the now immediatelyknowing that at that moment God is loving us and forgiving us and increasing our faith to produce the fruit of his tree of life in us.

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WE THE TEMPLE

During the closing few months leading up to the final week of the life and ministry of Jesus the momentum of his public appearances began to build up, and supernatural works of miracles and healing among the blind and the lame and the infirm were taking place everywhere he went. These sensational public appearances of Jesus and his engagement in open conflict and debate with the Scribes and Pharisees created a fame and notoriety that he had not deliberately set out to achieve. But he saw his Father ‘s power and love being glorified through him in these things, especially in the final most astonishing miracle of his raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead, and it was during that time that he began to be questioned by the many that followed him if he was indeed the Christ.

All this uninvited fame and notoriety and political power polling posed an enormous threat not only to Herod who was the legal king over the Jews, but it also signalled a threat to the Roman Empire as the people were urging him to establish his own kingdom. And when he finally rode into Jerusalem on a donkey at the beginning of the week of the Passover the Bible says; ‘The Pharisees spoke to one another saying, “You see, we can do nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him!’ (John 12:19) They feared that Jesus would decide to rule over the Jewish religion and keep on working miracles like feeding hungry multitudes and raising people from the dead, and they were anxious about the fervour of the hero worship of Jesus and the anticipation of his rise to spiritual power. They feared He would be invincible and topple their religious power base. They had feverishly been trying to discredit the resurrection of Lazarus to the point that the chief priests plotted to have Lazarus put to death, and for him to stay dead this time (John 12:10).

The passionate dedication of Jesus for the Temple, his Father’s house, had been most evident in those last few months of his ministry as he placed intense focus on the final three Temple feasts. For Jesus each Temple visit was not just like a visit to church as a good religious Jew. There was a distinct purpose for each visit because each feast had a message about how Jesus had been intricately involved in the record of Israel throughout history. At each feast he made statements that declared that he was the spiritual fulfillment of what that feast was all about. At each feast he declared what was happening in the here and now for Israel in that present moment. And for each feast he declared our future participation with him as the new Temple to be - in the prophetic fulfillment of our lives, as history would move forward in the plan of God for this age.

The first of the final three Temple visits was when he attended the Feast of Tabernacles, called ‘the feast of booths (tents)’, celebrating the miracle of the living water that flowed from out of the rock that Moses struck with his rod in the wilderness. (Exodus 17:3) Jesus had taken the back roads to Jerusalem to avoid the now common busy interaction with the crowds because he wanted to appear at the feast about midway into it to be ready for the moment for him to speak the words that would be immortalised for us throughout time. On that meandering way to the Temple he would have passed many hundreds of tents camped upon the hillsides because thousands of people gathered on these hills for the week of the ‘feast of booths (tents)’.

During that feast people had been dancing and singing as the water drawing ceremonies and rituals were acted out each morning. Women would get water from the surrounding springs and wells in their water pitchers and take them up to the temple singing with the men and the children from Isa 12:13 ‘Therefore with joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation. The feast had a closing ceremony on the 7th day and the main feature was the drawing of the living water commemorating the living water that God had provided for them at the Rock in their wilderness travels, and Jesus had arrived for that special part of the ceremony On that day, as the large golden water bowl was carried by the people up the temple steps, the huge crowd stood around watching and cheering, amidst the sounding trumpet blasts. This was the high point of the feast, and at the top of the temple steps was a special altar with a priest selected by the Sadducees, waiting for the big moment to arrive. When the bowl was presented to him he would raise his hand to indicate that the call was about to be made for people to ‘Come, you who thirst, drink of the water’.

This would have been the moment, when the priest raised his hand, that Jesus would have stood in front of the crowd and called out in a strong loud voice as we see in the Scripture, ‘On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, As the Scripture has said, Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water’. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive (John 7:37) Those words that Jesus said at that time in front of all the Jewish pilgrims from all over the Middle East, Asia Minor and Greece would have hit their ears like a thunderclap. Everybody would have known whose cry it was, and many would have seen its significance, namely that Jesus had come to embody all that past experience of Israel in the wilderness. The Scriptures tell us (John 7: 40-44) that division and argument broke out amongst the crowd. Many in the crowd said, ‘This is The Prophet’ while others said ‘This is The Christ’, while the temple police officers said ‘no one has ever spoken like this man’. Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their salvation and our salvation, our present faith and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy. And this audacious performance further provoked the priests and the teachers of the Law.

The second Temple visit was when he attended the Feast of Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the feast of the re-dedication of the Temple at Jerusalem. This feast is not mentioned in the Old Testament as it occurred between the time of the last book (Malachi), and before the time of Jesus. However, it is mentioned in the New Testament. It came in December, a little while after the Feast of Tabernacles, and before the Feast of Passover in March/April of the next year. John 10:22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the Temple, in Solomon's porch. Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” And then Jesus declared ‘I and the Father are one’ and the Bible tells us that the Jews picked up stones again to stone him, but Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:31)

Then in the last week of Jesus’ life and ministry, which we call Holy Week, Jesus rode down from the Mount of Olives near Bethany into Jerusalem on a donkey that had been prepared for him by his disciples, while the crowds laid palm leaves on the road in front of him calling out ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!’ (John 12:12) That last week, which was to culminate in the feast of Passover was also the week of the Last supper, and the week where he was betrayed by Judas, and where he agonised in the Garden of Gethsemane, and where He was denied by Peter, put on trial, and crucified. That spectacular visit of Jesus to the feast of Passover was the third significant visit to attend special Feasts at the Temple that Jesus had made in the last five months of his ministry.

This third visit was a week before the Feast of Passover, and this time he came to cleanse the temple from the corruption of the money changers and to heal many of the blind and the infirm who were only allowed to enter the outer Temple area.

Jesus had made clear to his disciples that the procession was to be the fulfillment of a prophecy by the prophet Zechariah. Zechariah 9:9 cry aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king is coming to you; he is righteous and able to deliver, he is humble and riding on a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey. Jesus had also told everyone that he was not interested in an earthly kingdom, and that his kingdom is a spiritual one, but his followers did not want to believe this.

After Jesus had entered Jerusalem and the noisy and boisterous procession was over, with palm leaves left strewn everywhere, Jesus headed straight for the Temple, his Father’s House, to which he was dedicated with a passion.

When Jesus entered the vast outer court of the Gentiles he went to where the money changers were selling animals and birds for sacrifice. It was into this area where multitudes of Jews from other regions like Syria and Persia and Chaldea and Asia Minor would come during this special week for the Feast of the Passover. The grandeur and vastness of this Temple complex that Herod had built covered an astounding area of about 35 acres, and the outer court of the Gentiles would have accommodated the space of many many football stadiums. It was a massive wonder described by Josephus the historian as ‘the greatest ever heard of’. Because these foreigners didn’t have the silver Temple shekel currency, they had to exchange their foreign money. The money changing tables were not the problem for Jesus, because these people needed to buy turtle doves, lambs, and such things to offer sacrifices, but his heart burst with indignation at the greed and corruption of the money changers because they charged from twenty to three hundred percent interest. This was not only criminal, but it was an abomination that his Father’s House which was supposed to be used for prayers and worship and sacrifice had been turned into ‘a den of thieves’ (Matthew 21). So he threw over their tables and chased them out of the temple. His actions were hard-hitting and forceful, but they were driven by a zealous and protective love for his Father’s house, the house of prayer and the presence of God.

There were many others quietly mingling among the crowd in the outer court that boisterous day of the incident with the money tables, they were the silent ones who had learned to accept their lot and not lift their voices above the crowd. They were the blind and the lame and infirm who were forbidden by the decrees in Leviticus 21 to enter into the Temple proper to ‘appear before the Lord’ and worship in his presence. They were separated and cut off and mostly despised by the Pharisees and some others of the Temple worshipers and Jesus had great compassion for them. They would have heard the life-giving words of this prophet/teacher who healed the sick and even forgave sins, and they would have held a humble hope in their hearts that this man was indeed the Messiah. They had held back when the commotion of the money tables was going on and when it had at last ceased and Jesus was left standing alone for a long moment they rushed towards him with outstretched arms and Jesus stood in their midst and healed everyone of them from their diseases. Jesus had come to change their pitiful state that day and to turn those outsiders into insiders. Matthew 21:14 the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

The Temple was the one Old Testament fixture that was emblematic of everything holy for Jesus throughout his entire life. He was dedicated there, and twelve years later when he came to the Temple with his parents for the feast of Passover he sat with the teachers of the Law there for three days speaking words of wisdom there to them and astonishing them, and when his distraught parents found him after they had supposed him missing, he said to them, ‘Don’t you know I must be about my Father’s work?’(Luke 2)

The Temple was the place where it was ordained in the Old Testament that God would meet with his people – it was his habitation. But this Temple was about to change its nature from a man-made structure to a Heaven-sent person. This was paramount for Jesus, who was in fact the living breathing walking Temple who knew that his death and resurrection would mean that the material Temple, called in Scripture the ‘Temple made with hands’ would no longer be the place where God met with his people. In fact, a short time after his death and resurrection the Temple would be destroyed and cease to exist. His prophecy concerning this reality actually became the charge of blasphemy that was made against him at his trial. John 2:9 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

The final dramatic transfiguration of the Jewish Temple at Jerusalem from the place of worship and God’s presence into a spiritual reality of ‘God with us’ through Jesus Christ was marked by a supernatural sign at the time of his crucifixion. When Jesus died on the cross at Golgotha the Scripture says; ‘And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit, and behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split’ (Matthew 27:50) .

When that curtain was torn it was the last barrier to come down between God and mankind in the earth. In a few weeks the Holy Spirit would be sent from heaven to the earth on the day of Pentecost and access into the holy place of God’s presence would be an act of faith and love as people received the risen life of Jesus to dwell within their hearts and become living Temples of the Holy Spirit.

So just as Jesus was able to say I am the Temple, he said that so that we can now say we are the Temple. And just as Jesus declared he was the living water at the feast of Tabernacles, so now we have that river of the life of the Holy Spirit flowing within us. And just as Jesus said ‘I and the Father are one’ at the feast of Dedication, we can say we are now one with he and the Father (John 14). And just as he spoke the words ‘It is finished’ on the cross at the Passover feast, so for us there is nothing we can do by our own works to add to his perfect work of salvation other than to believe.

No matter how many cathedrals and churches we build there is no longer any man-made sanctuary in this earth, or any altar. The altar is in our heart of love and surrendered faith in Jesus, and wherever we meet and however we meet in his name we are his Temple (1Corinthians 6:19), and he joins with us there in worship to the Father.

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MOUNTAINTOP MANIFESTO

Matthew 4:24 So the fame of Jesus also spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

On one such occasion Jesus sat with his disciples on a mountaintop and from there he began to teach the crowd that had been following him about what are called the Beatitudes, which means blessings – the blessings of being deeply fulfilled in soul and spirit. This teaching of Jesus is also known as ‘The Sermon on the Mount’. Today I’m calling that Sermon on the Mount the ‘Mountaintop Manifesto’ A manifesto is a proclamation of a grand intention that states where we have come from and where we are and the plan to get where we are going. Jesus starts the manifesto with the words; “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:2).

Life was difficult for the people who lived under the harsh Roman rule that governed their lives in those regions around Judea and from beyond the Jordan. They were mostly very needy people and many were poor and sick and infirm and had no real hope of fulfillment in life except for perhaps a faint and distant promise of a coming Messiah. Jesus wanted to give these ordinary lives the dignity and meaning and satisfaction in life that they had been created for, and to bring a spiritual fulfillment that they had never dreamed of.

He came to change the pitiful state they were in and to turn it upside down for them, and not only for those who heard him speak that day, but for all people everywhere and for all time, through being given entrance into his Heavenly Kingdom that would dwell within them in the here and now of their daily lives, and that new way of living would commence after his death and resurrection. Jesus had a wonderful plan to set all of these people into his Heavenly family with his Father and the Holy Spirit, and in his eyes they were already his brothers and sisters in that Heavenly family and so his heart was filled with compassion and with a magnificent hope of what his love was going to achieve for them.

However, he knew that the words of blessing that he was about to speak over them would be difficult for them to comprehend and as being beyond the realm of possibility, so he began to speak to their self-image of poverty and lowliness and to lift them into a place of blessed hope. And he began to teach the people, saying:

Matthew 5:2 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

I want to take these blessings one by one and expand on their message of blessed fulfilment of soul and spirit.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus chooses the lowest standing of human spiritual experience, that of poverty which reflects an attitude of neediness and scarcity and even destitution, and he offers the greatest of all possible blessing and benefit – that of possession of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus bestows his Kingdom with all its order and authority and wholeness and love and provision to enrich the spiritual lives of all who believe, no matter to what depth of poverty they have sunk. And Jesus made this promise to all of us. For all those there who heard that promise this would have been almost beyond belief, but Jesus spoke a powerful truth that day, one that he continues to speak to us in these days.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

The pain of deep personal loss is very hard for another person to share in because they cannot undo that loss for us. We cannot be told to cheer up or get over it or to ‘move on’. There is only one thing we need at that time – and that is to be comforted. These people had lived with loss and grief…We can ably comfort someone at those times with grace and sensitivity, and sometimes with a quiet presence that stills the heart. But the ‘Comforter’ the Holy Spirit can come into our loss in such a perfect way that only he can at those times because he knows exactly what kind of comfort we need and his embrace can give us comfort like we have never found before. The decease of a loved one brings a grief that is mingled with hope in the sense that the person we have lost has not ceased to exist and it is a matter of time till we meet again, and all will not only be well but be perfect.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Meek – praus - gentleness of spirit)

The gentle spirit of the meek doesn’t aggressively assert its rights over the rights of other people but knows that what is truly due to them will come to them in God’s way and in God’s time. There is great peace in being able to say ‘Thank You for what I have’. where you can find contentment in who you are and what you have, no more, no less. There is great peace in being able to say ‘I have enough, and God will supply what I don’t have.’ That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought with money.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Life takes on new meaning when you get a hunger deep inside of you to know God. This is what fulfils a life. We can compare the difference between an inner hunger and an outer hunger. The empty feeling of an outer hunger leads to a person eating anything they can find and that’s not always the most healthy food to choose and can lead to health problems. An inner hunger is an emotional and spiritual kind of emptiness that is only satisfied by relationships of mutual blessing where each person desires to bless the other, just as God desires to bless us and where we are also able to bless God.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Up to this point Jesus has been talking about the blessings that would come from God to them – for their own personal blessing. But now he begins to speak to them about how these blessings could begin to flow out from them, to bless other people.

He tells us we are blessed when we care and have mercy, because at the moment of being caring, we find ourselves being cared for, as caring and showing mercy sets up the divine flow that draws God’s care and mercy from Heaven to us and through us to others.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

When we get the inner world of our heart put right with attitudes of faith and love and truth we will see God in our outside world in the things that happen to us and in the people we come across – and they will see God in us. We will see meaning and purpose even in things that are contrary because God is working out all things for our best. This is a measure of our growth in faith and trust in the fact that God is always acting on our behalf for his goodwill to come to pass in those people and situations in our world that we bring before him in prayer.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.

At this point Jesus now lifts them into becoming co-laborers with him in building up the family of God, the family he has brought us into as his brothers and sisters. Peacemakers know their place in God’s family, and they help others to find their place in God's family. Peacemakers help people to agree and cooperate instead of competing or fighting. This is the gift of grace that sees past the differences that exist between one individual and another – in personality, and background, and ways of thinking and acting, and to be inclusive instead of exclusive. We may be different to each other in hundreds of ways, but we are one in Spirit. Paul writes from prison to the Ephesian Church and says; Ephesians 4:1 therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. We have been given gifts by God that are uniquely designed and made to measure for each one of us to express the love and power and truth of the Holy Spirit that we might bless one another. We celebrate that unity whenever we gather together, no matter how few or how many we are and that is one of the greatest ways we can bless The Lord who celebrates that love and unity along with us.

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Exodus 20:16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

Does this Commandment only deal with what we say about our neighbour, or does it include what we say about God?

It includes what we say about God because he wants there to be a true witness of himself in the earth. So when we discuss bearing false witness it is important that we also discuss true witness, and God is also person and therefor is also out neighbour.

Truth about God comes from God himself as his revelation or self revealing through his Word and his creation and the things that he does for us to see.

God is before all things. This is sometimes called the ‘prevenient grace of God’ God has acted upon us first and is always acting upon us. Atheists would say no – you thought God up. I say no to that - he thought us up.

What about scientific truth – Is not that an honest representation of what is?

Yes it is. However science is continually finding that it can observe ‘what is’ far more accurately than it used to. What has been concealed can now be more readily revealed because of new technology and instrumentation especially regarding the observation of the galaxies and the laws of motion. Truth is ‘what is’ The word in the Greek used in the Bible is ‘alethinos’, which means ‘that which is not concealed’, IE, ‘that which is revealed’.

What is the difference between scientific objectivity and faith.

The Bible says ‘faith is the evidence of things not seen’ Scientific enquiry would once perhaps scoffed at that statement but it now uses the same framework of enquiry into ‘what is’. Nobel Prize-winning physicists referred to the phenomenon of what appeared to be the possibility of two particles being in the same place at the one time (The Higgs Boson) as the "God Particle" It took nearly half a century and a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator to observe this. In the meantime the reality of this had to be ‘assumed’ as true before it could be seen because of their brilliant mathematical conclusion – so - ‘faith is the evidence of things not seen’

So how does this Commandment relate to the one before it regarding our relationships with one another?

The best way of linking them is to start with the relational failure that occurs with Commandment eight, being about the devaluing of another person’s possessions and their entitlement to them, and Commandment nine being about the devaluing of another person’s name and reputation and honour - their essential being or nature.

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THE UNKNOWN GOD

Paul had been preaching in Thessalonica and Berea in Northern Greece with Silas and Timothy, as part of his apostolic ministry to the gentiles, and he had to escape on his own from there because of opposition to his preaching and plots against him and he found a safe haven at Athens in the south of Greece. While he waited for his companions Silas and Timothy to arrive Paul was distressed to see that Athens was full of mythologies and legends and idols so he began to visit the Jewish synagogues there and the open marketplace and preach the resurrection of Jesus.

Meanwhile some of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of the city became intrigued and sceptical of these strange new things he had to say so they urged him to come to speak publicly about his views at the Areopagus, which was part courthouse and part philosophical debating forum. There he was met by ‘the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there who would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new’

Acts 17:22 So, Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man, of one blood, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their allotted spans of time and the boundaries of their dwelling places, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own philosophers have said, ‘ For we are indeed his offspring’. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” When they heard Paul speak of the resurrection of a person who had been dead, some laughed, but others said, "We want to hear more about this later." That ended Paul's discussion with them, but a few joined him and became believers, among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

When Paul spoke to those religious Greek scholars in Athens who were seeking to understand the meaning of their concept of ‘The Unknown God’ he told them that Jesus was the ‘Unknown God’ that they were actually seeking after, and when he said to them; In Him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28), he went on further to say an extraordinary thing; ‘Even one of your own philosopher/poets has said this same thing.’

Paul understood Greek philosophy and knew that it contained an all-embracing eternal and unchanging truth of universal reason that they called ‘logos’, a word which described an unknown something that arranged and sustained the universe. So somewhere there was a concept in their minds that all human beings really belonged within an unknown something far greater than themselves. We know that something as a Someone called Jesus. It might seem amazing to us that these Greek philosophers even had a concept of an unknown god, but the Bible tells us that God has placed ‘eternity’ (olam – the vanishing point that remains unreachable – an horizon) in the human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11 he has put eternity into man's heart, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. That means that there is an unquenchable searching in the human heart for something that is far greater than humanity and contains humanity within a higher creative entity than itself. This concept exists deep within the heart of every person right up to this day but this concept can exist in peoples’ minds as simply being a concept and not being a person who is relational towards humanity with love and mercy and compassion and wisdom and order, and who is also that ultimate intelligence of creation. That person is Jesus Christ

Paul offered those Greek scholars his revelation of Jesus as the Son of God who was that ‘Someone’ in whom all of humanity now existed. He told them that Jesus Christ as God had become a human being that was the Son of God and that had been killed for proclaiming that fact - and had then risen from the dead. Jesus had told his disciples that he and his Father would live in them and they would live in him and that the Holy Spirit would reveal all of this to them after he had left them to be with his Father. (John 14).

Some of the Greeks he was speaking to accepted the truth that Paul spoke but others said this was preposterous while others said they would give the matter some thought (Acts 17:32)

So even though that profound cosmic truth of what Paul proclaimed to those people on that day about us as humanity being in Jesus and his being in us there is no way that that can be grasped with the natural mind. This requires a revelation of the Holy Spirit about the Father/Son relationship that we have been brought into through Jesus, otherwise it is not a personal reality for us to live in. Our discovery of this cosmic truth that has already been accomplished becomes our FAITH. It doesn’t become true when we believe it; it was always true but now our faith makes it a present reality for our lives as we discover it. Jesus is never separated or isolated from the Father and he has made us part of their life and we had no say in that decision – but we do have a say in how we respond to it just as those Greek religious scholars had. We need the light of this truth to penetrate our heart otherwise the darkness and confusion of the human mind keeps us ignorant of it and we remain forever searching and never finding the unknown something (Someone) that we need, that fulfils our lives. What is generally believed in our Western culture is that wealth and success and being well thought of is just about the best thing that could ever happen to us, and God has every good reason to break this illusion of ours however he chooses. This is part of the perplexity and confusion of our age. Other cultures may have different values, but there is ultimately only one destiny to be realized and the natural mind cannot realize it without a revelation from God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural mind does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned…16 For "who has known the mind of God. But we have the mind of Christ.”

Paul was not speaking to a Jewish culture in Athens, but to a sophisticated elite bunch of philosophers, so he did not speak to these scholars about Israel; he went back to the creation of mankind and the oneness of us as being all of one blood in origin from one male and one female. Paul is anticipating the reaction of people of the world of all kinds of cultures having to grapple with the one universal truth that ultimately includes all of us in history as being in Christ before the beginning of time. That is why the Bible is clear in its recording of its genealogies of Jesus as an historical person, and while placing him particularly in a Middle Eastern culture his wisdom and his supernatural acts of love and justice and mercy strike deep into the hearts and minds of all cultures.

These genealogies that are recorded in the Bible in the four Gospels go back to different points of commencement and origin of the ancestry of Jesus. The writers of each of these gospels were inspired to convey particular emphases concerning the narrative of the life of Jesus and his ministry. The writers were also targeting different audiences of that day. For instance, Matthew goes back to Abraham, and Mark starts with the birth of John the Baptist, while Luke goes back to Adam.

John, however, goes back beyond them all and begins with ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (Logos) – which was a word the Greeks understood, as we saw previously with Paul in Athens. John was stating that Jesus was the Logos, the very same word that the Greeks used to describe an all-embracing truth of universal reason, an unknown something that created and arranged and sustained the universe. That statement would have challenged any Greeks anywhere listening to it regarding their understanding of the meaning of Logos, because they would not have conceived of that lofty universal concept of theirs as being a mere mortal called Jesus who somehow created the universe. Nonetheless the Holy Spirit confronted them with that truth and made grace available for that truth to be embraced in their hearts and believed in as the ultimate truth for their lives. In the same way that statement of John’s would have disrupted the Jew’s understanding of the word Logos, which to them was not Jesus but simply and categorically the Torah, the sacred written Word delivered to them from God, and again the Holy Spirit would have confronted them with that truth of Jesus as the Christ and made grace available for that truth to be embraced in their hearts and believed in as the ultimate truth for their lives.

So across the board, Jews and gentiles (the rest of us as humanity) were being confronted by the reality that one man, Jesus, is, as God, the totality of meaning from the beginning of creation through the times of its fall and its redemption and then its fulfillment in eternity - the Alpha and Omega.

When John writes in his Gospel further on in the first chapter (vs.11) he states emphatically to all of us concerning Jesus, that he came unto his own and we knew him not and received him not. And we killed him. But Jesus came back from the dead, and he can never be killed again, so John tells us that the best thing we can decide for our lives is to be actively joined in Spirit to his life, because he will not cease his speaking and his supernatural doing of love and justice and mercy towards us - he will never go away. He will interrupt all of our religion and worship and philosophy and he desires to draw us into participation of the oneness of life that he shares with his Father.

Among the Apostles it was Paul and John who were the ones most graced with the revelation of the vastness of the universal work of atonement accomplished for all of humanity by Jesus on the cross. When Paul said those words to the Greeks in Athens ‘In Him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28), he was stating a universal fact about all of humanity. He was actually saying that each one of us has our ‘being’ in Christ. God is uncreated being and we are created being. In English grammar to have ‘being’ simply means ‘to be’, so to have your being within something means that that is what describes what you are part of and what you belong to - it defines who you are – it is your ‘I am’ – it is your identity.

The world carves out its own identity – its own ‘I am’

For many people this identity can be a religion, a political party, an ideology, or a pathway to enlightenment, whether that is a pathway of reason or a pathway of mystical practice – there’s a thousand varieties and in all these things people live and move and have their being – and that’s understandable because they find some kind of meaning in those things. And the Church has also often adopted its own different styles of thinking and dogmas that may not altogether be of divine revelation but are strongly held opinions or persuasions that people belong to, in which they live and move and have their being.

The people in the book of acts knew they were in a world changing time – not just starting a new religion or even trying to get people to come to church. They didn’t even know precisely what church was – they just regularly gathered together as God’s Family and their conversation was about Jesus and they believed in the witness of the Spirit - and his Church grew. They became a community of love and faith and took that love and faith wherever they went. Jesus did the rest as the Holy Spirit gifted them with power from on high. They also had to learn right from the beginning through many challenges how to avoid false teaching. Paul wrote to the Ephesian church not to be like children, believing in one opinion and then another because of persuasive teachers who had cleverly used deceptive techniques that sounded like truth but weren’t, and they took advantage of the people to gather disciples to themselves. So Paul warned them strongly about this and urged them to grow in truth and love and discernment, that they might become more and more like Christ (Ephesians 4:14-16)

And each one of us is designed to live and move and have our being, our true being and our true identity in the person of Jesus. So as a church and as individuals our purpose is to believe in that witness and empowerment of the Spirit and in the simplicity of Christ as in the book of Acts and to participate in the life of Jesus and the Father. Participating in the life of Jesus and the Father is what we have been given to share in as humanity. This was all planned before sin came into the equation and that’s why Jesus had to come to live and die and live again to reconcile us to the Father. He wanted to get us in on the beautiful relationship that he had with the Father and Holy Spirit. And whether Adam had sinned or not, Jesus still had to come to make us one with the Father because HE IS THE ETERNAL SON – NOT ADAM. In him we live and move and have our being – we are not trying to get there - we are there - so let’s embrace it, celebrate it and proclaim it.

Ephesians 3:18 That you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness (pleroma – completeness) of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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PROMISE AND BLESSING

The Blessings of Abraham. Genesis 12:1 ‘The LORD had said to Abram, Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. 2I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing… and all people on the earth will be blessed through you.” These blessings were spoken to a man who came from what is now Iraq. He was a man with a heart that wanted to find the one true God. The blessings he received were personal for him but they were corporate for both the Jewish Nation of Israel that was to come through him, and later to the whole world through Jesus.

The Blessings to Israel Israel first became a nation in Egypt, where they had been in captivity to Pharaoh for four hundred years. God then miraculously delivered them out of Egypt by the hand of Moses who led them through the wilderness on their journey to the Promised Land. God gave Israel the Covenant of the Promises and blessings of the Old Testament and the Commandments of the Law through Moses when they began their wilderness journey. God said to Moses “I am going to give you the land that I promised to Abraham” (Exodus 6:6-8). However, there were conditions that applied for Israel to receive the blessings (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). Moses was told to tell the people that if they loved God and obeyed all the Commandments he gave them, and worshipped God correctly they would receive the blessings of the land and its crops and have good rains in their seasons, but if they disobeyed God and worshipped other gods they would receive no rain, the enemy would take their land, and their crops would fail. In fact, the Bible records a whole page of curses for disobedience.

There was a command with a conditional blessing that God gave to them concerning the land which was that they had to give the land a rest for one year in every seven years. This was called the Sabbath Year. There was to be no work, just a happy life together as families and as a community of God’s people, and in that Sabbath Year God would give their crops three times the normal yield, and he would bless them with a holiday year during which time they would bless God back with joy and thanksgiving for their prosperity. Another example of a command with a conditional blessing to them as a nation was that if they strayed away from God but then repented and came back to him, to the temple, and prayed with a right heart then God would hear from heaven and forgive them and heal their land - meaning that he would send them rain and grow their crops etc. (2Chronicles 7:14). For about 1500 years there were seasons of blessing and obedience, but there were also long stretches of time of disobedience and confusion, and God’s judgment came on Israel. For example, they failed to obey the Sabbath Year for 490 years by not resting and for that disobedience they were sent into captivity in Babylon for seventy years for the land to get its one in every seven years rest (2Chronicles 36:21). The behavior of the people usually fell into line behind the behavior of the kings and the priests, and the prophets would have to call them back to repentance.

So what were these Old Testament blessings for and what was the point? The blessings showed the nations round about them such as Iraq and Iran and Syria and Egypt, that a supernatural God was active and powerful in the heavens on behalf of his people. The blessings were also simply an act of love and kindness from a good God to his people so that they could live a life of fulfillment and prosperity. These blessings kept and preserved the nation of Israel intact so that they could become the womb and the cradle for Jesus to come to earth and bring the most profound and wonderful ultimate blessing to them and to the whole world – The gift of God’s life to humanity through Jesus, fulfilling the last clause in the blessing to Abraham which was ‘and all people on the earth will be blessed through you.’

God was telling Abraham here that there would be a new kind of blessing from a new promise about the New Testament Covenant blessing that is radically different from the Old Covenant. This supernatural blessing allows all of humanity to share in the life that Jesus has with his Father in heaven, as explained by Paul in Ephesians. Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with ALL spiritual blessings from Heaven.

The law of the Commandments was given to keep Israel from destroying their moral and relational integrity because the Law was perfect in its wisdom and order for the self-preservation of a community (Psalm 19). That was the best system that could have existed to achieve that end. The Commandments if observed faithfully by anyone, even today, will preserve the integrity of any community and produce outcomes of blessings of all kinds. They are designed to bring peace and order and harmony and prosperity and honesty and good health - and no corrupt politics.

The new Blessings of the New Covenant are of a far greater supernatural order The shortcoming of the Law of perfect wisdom and order was that it could not produce a life of oneness in spirit with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. To receive this ultimate blessing of having God’s life living within us one has to believe the truth of what actually happened in and through Jesus’ life and death and resurrection – and that’s all! It has nothing to do with the Law. However, the Bible tells us that if we are truly living in the Spirit of the life of Jesus we will live out our lives demonstrating the reality and meaning of those Commandments through the grace and power of The Holy Spirit as he makes them real to us (Romans 8:4). Our outer life may become blessed with a new dimension of order and integrity, and that is great reward, but even that virtuous natural reordering of our outward lives is not the spiritual blessings of the promised blessing of Abraham.

All Spiritual Blessings The spiritual blessing is The Holy Spirit bringing to us the impartation of God’s nature of his goodness and his love and joy and peace into our hearts. This operates as an active spiritual energy of life wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we are, whether we are on a holiday or in the busy stress of work, in times of global peace or in times of a global pandemic, in a good economy under good government or under dictatorial rule. The shared life with Jesus has nothing to do with how life seems to be going on in our circumstances. The shared life with Jesus IS the blessing that reorders our life and brings all things into line with his will for our lives.

All the material blessings under the Old Covenant had a spiritual silver lining because of the supernatural manifestations of God to them in the wilderness and in the Promised Land, with miracles of provision and protection and angelic visitations. In the same way, all of our spiritual blessings bring the intervention of God into our lives in a supernatural way above what we could ask or think - and we don’t get to vote on what kind of blessings we receive. They are given by God and they are ultimately better than we could ever order for ourselves.

So this life of faith is also a life of paradox because we don’t always see blessings in the same way that God does. God has the big picture for our lives and he wants us to trust him for the details. The Bible says he has written the days of our lives in a book (Psalm 139). We have a friend who is on every page of that book and he gives us wisdom when we ask. We put together imperfect prayers and he designs the perfect answers that take us closer and closer to his goal for our lives in contrast to ours. Even good honest spiritual goals that we set for ourselves like becoming more holy, and serving The Lord more faithfully end up bringing us into a place of realizing our own powerlessness to achieve them. This sense of inadequacy drives us into depending more and more on Jesus and his kindness and compassion and grace to travel with us in our honest seeking for these things. It then dawns on us that a process of total dependence upon God is the real goal. This is God’s goal for us. This is where REAL FAITH happens, and this real faith pleases God.

The real blessings are enjoyed in a life shared with a friend who wants the best for us. He is perfect love, and perfect love desires the best for the beloved (1 Corinthians 13). This relationship is a moment-by-moment journey that Jesus lives in – in the here and now and for all eternity. If the whole world came into this friendship with Jesus now there would be no wars, no poverty and no darkness and destruction. The world must give account in due time for the integrity of its relationship to its friend Jesus, here and now and in eternity (Romans 1:18, Acts 17:31). This eternity will exist as a new Heaven and a new earth one day, but the life of faith in Jesus as our friend can exist for us as a life of ALL spiritual blessings right here - right now. Amen

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HEALING THE SHADOW SELF

Much of our inner life with its feelings and deeper motivations of why we do what we do is hidden in the deeper recesses of the soul and remains unknown even to ourselves. These feelings and doubts and fears get pushed down and suppressed, and they make up what are called the shadows of the unknown self – our shadow self. When David wrote Psalm 32 he portrays to us his life as a man who was taken from shame and guilt into acceptance and forgiveness, and from despair and depression into fulfilment and joy - and transformed from his shadow self into his true self. And he encourages us to embrace this kind of transformation through God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. In this psalm David starts off paying tribute to the blessing of the magnificent mercy and forgiveness of God. He then recounts the damage and torment he did to his soul by keeping everything in the shadows before finally opening up to God and letting his light and truth come in to his heart. Then he gives thanks for the safe place of refuge that he finds in the presence of God and he rejoices in the powerful blessing of his inner transformation, encouraging us to trust God for this same blessing.

Psalm 32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3 For when I kept silent (h?âra??; concealed or ignored the state I was in), my bones wasted away through my groaning (aga) all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 5 I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. 6 Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time, so that they may not drown in the floodwaters of judgment. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from getting stuck in a place of trouble: you surround me with shouts of deliverance. 7. (And then God says) I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye. Don’t be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, and will not stay close to you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

DAVID’S TRIBUTE TO GOD’S LOVE AND FORGIVENESS This Psalm starts off speaking about three expressions of God’s of love, in his forgiveness and covering and mercy towards us of our three areas of failure and liability in our human nature which are, transgression, sin, and iniquity. Each of these is defined specifically in the original Hebrew language;

Transgression - (p?e??a‘); means active resistance, revolt or rebellion. This is the act of deliberate and wilful disobedience to God’s moral and spiritual laws. David said that he received forgiveness for those things from a forgiving and eternally loving God (Jeremiah 31:31). Right from the beginning God never stopped loving his children Adam and Eve and he forgave them their transgression. He also required that they bear the consequence of their disobedience – primarily the startling and unfamiliar experience of feeling separated from God, which would disappear whenever they repented and received his forgiveness and redeeming love.

Sin - (h???t?â’â); means an offence – turning from the path and missing the mark. This is the experience of being led astray by wrong desires and falling into sin through temptation. David was temped into committing adultery with Bathsheba and subsequently sending her husband into the front line of battle where he was killed. And even though David knew that he was covered by God for those things because of the blood of sacrifice, he also knew he would bear the consequences of his sin, and suffer much grief because of it. We read in this psalm of the sorrow and remorse he went through because off his guilt.

Iniquity – (avown); means the twisted or distorted nature of our flawed humanity right from the time of our birth. David said that this was not counted against him. David describes his iniquity (avown) in another psalm; Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was born in iniquity… You delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret place of my heart.

DAVID’S PAIN AND SORROW THAT OPENS HIM UP TO GOD’S LIGHT That is why David said in Psalm 139 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is anything offensive in me, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. David realized he was getting in the way of God’s light into his heart so that all he could see was his shadow - the shadow of the unknown side of his sinful self, the false vision of himself living independently from God and getting stuck in a place of trouble (vs 6). He knew that God knew everything about him and that God didn’t have to search him in order to find out what he was like. What David was saying was ‘Lord I want to know about me what you know about me’. David wanted to know what was in the shadow side of his life so that he could make way for God to transform him into the man that God wanted him to be. David knew by his guilt and shame that there were things inside him that had led him into deep sin. He also knew he had been driven by his natural instincts to react defensively and aggressively in the face of threat and danger.

He tells us in this psalm that what caused him so much sorrow and suffering was the struggle with the burden of his hidden sin and his doubts and fears and wrong motivations, and he was honest enough to want to know about them and to be transparent about his shadow self. Our shadow self is a bundle of everything we don’t want to know about concerning this painful life of ours because we have a life full of our own aspirations and plans that we want to get on with and it is scary and painful to face the why and how of the pain. We cannot ignore the very real pain of those hidden shadow feelings even though our inner shadow self with its hidden feelings and deeper motivations and its doubts and fears can get pushed down and suppressed so that we can remain unconscious of them. Our pain will always come to the surface while everything else can stay hidden. when David faced that shadow self and came into the light of God’s Word he received healing from the guilt and shame and the emotional and mental pain.

When David wrote in the Psalms, he opened up his life to us as well as to God - his thoughts and feelings and his successes and failures. He does not only open up his own life to us but he also mirrors the soul of humanity and the journey of that soul as it changes its attachment from a self-serving pursuit of fulfillment and happiness to its attachment to God’s heart. David is an example in the Bible of an Old Testament person living with a heart for God and prophetically enjoying a New Testament experience of mercy and forgiveness and the attainment of true fulfilment and happiness through God’s love. The Bible tells us that he was called ‘a man after God’s own heart’ (Acts 13:22) and he writes in Psalm 139:16 – all the days for me were written in your book, as God has done for each one of us. We are drawn into the life of David where we can often see our own hu manity reflected in his life. Even Jesus in his humanity as the perfect Son of God who was without sin is called many times in the Bible ‘The Son of David’. David opens up that book of his God-loved and God-forgiven life for us to read, inviting and challenging us to do the same and to be healed from our shadow self to our true self.

THE NEW LIFE OF TRANSFORMATION Paul quotes David from Psalm 32 in Romans and brings this experience of David’s healing of his shadow self into the New Testament through the work of Jesus on the cross and he mentions those same three areas of failure and liability.

Romans 4:6 … “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his iniquity.”

So this psalm is central to the gospel and points out the path of true peace and happiness to all of us who are made aware of our shadow self, and upright enough in heart (righteousness) to take responsibility for it. This awareness often comes about when we have failed ourselves and God through our stumbling and falling and our hurtful reactions to situations. However, this blessing in disguise of being made aware of our shadow self can set us free from the harmful spiritual and emotional and physical effects of darkness so that we can find healing and growth in our spirit and soul.

Just as our weakness and failure of our natural life is hidden in our shadow self, our New life of faith is hidden with Christ in God. And just as light and truth reveals our failures, his light and truth reveals to us our true self as God created us to be in Christ, accepted and forgiven, endowed with individual creative gifts that are waiting to be expressed and enjoyed.

The journey of the old natural mindset that creates its own pathway to fulfillment and happiness starts at around age 3 or 4 when we begin to plan ways to achieve our own program for happiness, which is about having what we want when we want it, and using unpleasant measures such as demanding attention, emotional manipulation and crying, and anger tantrums. The difference between children and adults is that adults have learned to become more skilled and subtle about pursuing their fulfillment and happiness program. In this old natural mindset as adults we still want to control the circumstances around us, and to get attention and approval for everything we do and to feel secure about our material possessions, and along with around 8 billion others we pour all our emotional and mental and physical energy into those pursuits. We are willing to change our careers, our appearance and identity labels, and even our names, but ask us to pour our energy into changing our heart to pursue a life devoted to God and we resist at all costs. People are too busy with their programs, even religious and prayerful ones, wanting that bit of extra control maybe just over a few things, even sometimes over God, and quoting a Scripture to him just for good measure.

The kind of transformation that David is talking about in this psalm is not about being changed from a bad person to a good person, or from a non-churchgoer to a churchgoer; transformation is about being changed from living in the natural shadow of our false self to living in the light of The Holy Spirit in our true self. That transformation is what the Bible means about what our salvation really is – sozo – salvation – healing of the shadow self at the present moment. It means far more than going to Heaven one day – where there will be no more tears no more sorrow no more shadow self. That is why the Bible says ‘Now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2 - sozo – healing). This is the time for the healing of our shadow self – here and now. We have the presence of God but what can be missing is our being present to God. Being present to God means two things; the first thing is simply to BE THERE and honouring that time as belonging to God and CONSCIOUS of his love for you and of his supernatural activity for good towards you at that moment. The second thing is to PRESENT yourself to God as his new creation yielded to his will for your life and confirming this by giving thanks to him in your current circumstances. I believe that at this time in history there is a work of the grace of God drawing us into being PRESENT with him and to him with our whole heart and mind.

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THE OTHER SIDE

Jesus had been with his disciples caring for the multitudes and had just miraculously fed five thousand people with the five loaves and the fishes. It had been a tiring day and so instead of going back to Capernaum with His disciples in the boat, he told them to go ahead (Mark 6:42) while he went up on a mountain to pray.

John 6:15 … Jesus went up to the mountain alone by Himself, and when it began to get dark, the disciples went down to the sea and began to row their boat toward Capernaum, but soon a gale swept down upon them as they rowed, and the sea grew very rough and it was now dark. They were three or four miles out when suddenly they saw Jesus walking toward the boat! They were terrified, but he called out to them and said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the other side.

This story describes some of the faith principles of how we work together in partnership with Jesus as the disciples did. They had faithfully done their part in the miracle of the multiplication of the food, in handing out the loaves and fishes and they had trusted Jesus to do his supernatural part. Jesus had been teaching the multitudes and his disciples had been feeding and caring for them and having completed that day’s work there was more work for them to do the next day across the sea of Galilee where another crowd would be waiting for Jesus. They would usually travel together across the water to Capernaum, but this particular time Jesus told them to row across without him so that he could rest and pray to his Father.

They would never have guessed that the experience of rowing across the Sea of Galilee would work out the amazing way that it did. They were seasoned rowers but rowing is tough work and involves the uncertainty of rowing forward in one direction while you are actually looking backwards in another direction. It would have been particularly tough for those disciples because there was a raging storm and darkness and they were fearful that Jesus was not with them, but the disciples kept on rowing. Suddenly Jesus came to them in a supernatural way walking on the water, and they thought he was a ghost, but when he told them it was he, they willingly let him into the boat and the boat was miraculously transported to the other side.

When we think about it, that’s the way we move forward in life anyway, rowing forward in one direction while we are actually looking backwards in another direction. We can only go ahead in life with the things that belong in the package of our past, the good and the bad, the successes and the failures and the lessons learned and the faith gained. We can’t guess the future but we can have a goal – and that is the ‘other side’ which contains the uncertainties and the challenge and the effort. Our real faith is the reality of knowing that trusting God that in our obedient rowing forward while also looking backwards will be met with Jesus supernaturally coming into the boat. He gets us to the ‘other side’ in every situation if we are truly living by faith. Our times are in his hands.

We have the same natural uncertainty as those disciples about how things will work out as we try to move forward in times of storms of darkness and difficulty, and that is when we call upon the faith that is being considered in this story. Faith means we are never certain about the future but we are certain that God has it all in hand and is acting supernaturally for good on our behalf. We do the natural and God does the supernatural and it is beyond our understanding how the working together with God plays out, other than we have faith that he alone knows the end from the beginning and always shows up and is never late. That is how faith works – we remain faithful to yield obediently to what Holy Spirit prompts us to do then we trust Jesus to complete his perfect work. That is our obedience of faith (Romans 16:26). The Bible tells us that he wants to help us be willing do what is the good thing to do, and he helps us in the doing; Philippians 2:12 … you must be even more careful to do the good things that result from being saved, obeying God with deep reverence, shrinking back from all that might displease him. For God is at work within you, helping your willingness to obey him, and then helping you do what is his desire for you.

Often because of our limited understanding of what God wants us to do, the doing can become problematic because we might try too hard to do things in our own strength and feel we can push through, and it may not be what God wants but we do it anyway and we find out later that we got it wrong. We did what we thought was a good thing but it was not a ‘God’ thing. On the other hand, we may not try enough, and fail to do the responsible good thing out of ignorance or carelessness or apprehension - but God sees the heart and can override our human failure, and we learn to trust in his mercy and we get to learn of his ways. Staying with the metaphor of rowing across a lake, we can ask the question ‘Why wasn’t the journey of the disciples on a placid lake with a moonlit sky and no wind, and all having a singalong? Well, day to day to life is not very often like that, and that day wasn’t like that for them. They were hardy rowers but on that night things were scary and they were full of apprehension, as it is so often with us, but they kept rowing

And as we obediently keep rowing forward, I believe that we do not always have to be looking backwards, but rather we can be looking upwards, knowing that Jesus is on the mountain, praying and cheering us on from Heaven, and he will come to us as we seek Him in the midst of storms and darkness, and get us to the other side. Philippians 3:13 But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward Heavenly call (invitation, welcome) of God in Christ Jesus.

And God is going to get us there. I believe we are currently in critical times of being taken forward in the purposes of God, and we are deeply aware that we are going through storms and sometimes darkness, and many are wondering when Jesus will come to them. He is actually always with us, but he wants to open our eyes of faith and show us that he is in the boat and replaces our rowing with his supernatural completion of the journey.

Jesus has a special here and now journey for every one of us in our current circumstances. He has destined us to get to 'the other side', to the place where we are meant to be going, that is, the spiritual and circumstantial goal he has for us in any particular season in our lives. He is watching over us. He is not complaining about how badly we may be rowing even if we are, so we keep on rowing, because if we stop rowing, we drift.

There are many ‘Other sides’ in our day to day experience that God wants to get us to and they all involve us faithfully doing our part while he supernaturally works his part. The other side of the challenge of what is required of us that faces us today in our circumstances. The other side of something that has been delayed or put off because it is difficult. The other side of our management of a tiring physical struggle of illness or recovery from illness. The other side of this current global pandemic that faces us all.

He is cheering us on. Some of those disciples had made mistakes in the past and would make more into the future but He loved them dearly and was committed to working with them and helping them – ‘gracing’ them. Jesus is not just working with us but he is working within us by his Spirit.

On your particular journey at this present time all you may seem to be doing is rowing your lungs out, but he is up on the mountain praying. He is praying for our faith and watching, and he is willing to come to you in a supernatural way, and when he does, 'immediately you are on the other side' - to where he wants you to be. When the connection happens, you become a different person and your world changes.

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How does failure in the seventh commandment lead to a problem in the eighth Commandment?

In the last commandment, which dealt with unfaithfulness and infidelity in relationships, we saw that materialism began to establish itself in the heart of that person, so that self gratification and things that people could have or indulge themselves in became more important than other people and their needs and feelings.

So people start to take for themselves. They become takers instead of givers.

How does the New Testament expand the meaning this Commandment like it has with all the other Commandments?

The apostle Paul wrote concerning the transformation of a thief.

Ephesians 4:28 Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labour, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.

This scripture shows that the total transformation is that a taker becomes a giver. And on the way to becoming a giver the thief also becomes an honest worker. this commandment then, is more than just about stealing, but about a change of heart that brings a person into the full understanding of their own, and other people's worth. That scripture actually covers three areas in our lives, which are: Material honesty, productivity, and generous giving.

Would you see tithing being related to this Commandment, because the Scripture says in Malachi 3 :8 Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, "In what way have we robbed You?" In tithes and offerings.'

It is because we acknowledge God's ownership of everything that we tithe to Him. Many who disagree with tithing believe that tithing belongs under the law of Moses, and therefore has been done away with in the New Testament. That is not true. Tithing began before Moses was born, and was first performed by Abraham as a relational act of worship, when he called God 'The possessor of Heaven and earth' (Genesis 14:22).

So does that mean that Christians have to tithe today?

I do not believe that Christians are under the Law as regards tithing. I believe there needs to be a revelation of tithing as an act of relational worship towards a person, God, in fact Jesus, rather than a legalistic obligation.

There is a Bible principle that giving generously causes people to give back to you. Luke 6:38 – For if you give, you will get! Your gift will return to you in full and overflowing measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more.

Yes it seems to speak for itself and many people can testify to the fact that it works. And it is not just about money-it works for anything that is given out of a giving heart.

This Scripture describes that faith principle that releases a miraculous increase of what is given out of a right heart, like you just said about the giving person.

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THE DEVIL AND THE DETAIL

There is a lot of speculation and attributing of blame concerning how the Corona virus came into being– was it made in a laboratory and if so where? Or was it transmitted by a bat or some other animal? Some people may even ask whether it was sent by God, and if so, why? Others may believe that it was sent by the devil. In my humble opinion, which I think I share with many others - the jury is still out on the laboratory and/or the bat, and the exact whereabouts of the bat and the lab. I don’t think it was sent by the devil, but I think he is having an eventful and busy time with it.

GOD’S CREATION Ultimately the virus is simply part of God’s creation, along with other viruses and bacteria and microbes and plants and animals and people - these are now all part of a disordered fallen creation that fell when man and woman fell in the Garden of Eden. The creation was put out of order and into corruption through the sin of Adam and Eve. And after that happened God said to Adam ‘the ground is cursed because of you…it shall bring forth thorns and thistles (and other ugly things - Genesis 3:17). The Bible also says that People walk on in darkness, and all the foundations of the earth have been put out of alignment (Psalm 82:5). That follows the fact that humanity is out of alignment with God and because of sin we do harm to ourselves and others and bring disorder into our world. But the Bible also says that this curse will only last for a limited time, when God’s plan of redemption is finished in the earth and the Lord returns and we are given new bodies at the Resurrection of the dead. Romans 8:19-22 … For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing (apokalypsis) of the sons of God… The creation waits with hope to be set free from the bondage of corruption, and that there will be a New heavens and new earth (Isaiah 66, 2Peter 3:10, Revelation 21).

JESUS IN A FALLEN WORLD The fact is that when Jesus arrived on this planet he lived his life in a fallen world in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. He knew he was not in control of the corruption that was going on around him politically and religiously, but he also knew that his Father was in command of everything, and that things were going according to his Father’s plan. Jesus did only what his Father told him. If his father told him to still a raging storm, it would happen, and on the other hand when Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus didn’t resist that claim but said to him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. God was in control and he had a purpose for everything and in everything that was going to happen. Jesus did not come to reform the politics of the day, he came to transform lives.

So this current global pandemic was always going to happen within the purpose and plan of God.

TIMES OF TRIAL We are living in times of great physical and emotional and spiritual trial in the current global pandemic, in which there is an enormous amount of strain being placed upon nations, governments, communities, corporations, churches, families and individuals. The physical and emotional pressure that everybody is under is out in the open for all to see and to be read about and talked about everywhere. But there is a spiritual activity of both darkness and light that all nations and all individuals at this present time are under in the unseen world of the spirit and that sits invisibly above everything else, ultimately influencing the feelings, the thinking, and the behavior of people in a far broader spiritual dimension than anyone could imagine.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT The opposing spirits of darkness and light are both powerfully at work in this hour. The Bible tells us that in intense conflict between darkness and light, God says to his people that his Spirit is far more powerful than the spirit of this world – He says to us; arise and shine, for your light has come…for darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light… (Isaiah 60:1)

THE POWERS OF DARKNESS We will look first at the purpose and strategy of the power of the work of darkness. The purpose and strategy and the activity of darkness lurks behind the different names that darkness is known by – names such as the Devil, and Satan, and Lucifer and the god of this world, and the Prince of the power of the air, and a number of other nasty titles (Abbadon, Beelzebub etc.)

All those different names that are used for the powers of darkness also portray a range of different job descriptions that can be found in those Scriptural titles; The Devil - Diabolos – to throw or let go of a thing without caring where it falls - to fragment and scatter - to create division. Satan – Satanas – the accuser and the adversary – to create judgment and vengeance and hostility. Lucifer –The fallen light giver who became the dark giver who said he would be as the Most High God (Isaiah 14:14) – and as the ‘god of this world’ he blinds the minds of those who do not believe (2Corinthians 4:4) The prince of the power of the air who tempts the sons of disobedience to live for their own desires (Ephesians 2:2).

THE DETAIL OF DIABOLOS Most of those dark spiritual activities found in the meanings of the names overlap in some way, such as lying and tempting and accusing, but I would like to feature the detail of the name of the Devil - Diabolos – to throw a thing - to fragment and scatter - to create division.

Diabolos comes from two Greek words, dia which means through, and bolos which means to throw. The word bolos is where we get the word ball from, like throwing a ball. It is also where we get the word ‘ballistic’ from, as in ballistic missile. So we have the picture of the Devil hurling destructive spiritual missiles at us to break and fragment our relationship with God and with one another and within our own souls. Diabolos doesn’t care what he throws as long as it destroys oneness with God and peace with one another.

DIABOLOS AND JESUS When Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (diabolos - Matthew 4:1). Darkness came at Jesus as the Devil, the missile thrower, and he threw every missile he had at Jesus to tempt him to split off from his Father and show how powerful he could be independent of him. The Devil even subtly taunted him with ‘If you are the Son of God turn these stones into bread!’ What a victory if Jesus would have fallen for that and not remained faithful as ‘the Son of God’. Jesus didn’t do anything unless his Father told him, so Jesus was able to hold things together in his heart of faith and truth and love between himself and his Father. He was integrated with his Father and was not going to be disintegrated.

The disintegration of relationships is being hurled at humanity during this time of trial like never before. Jesus prophesied of times like this that would come; He said that nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another, and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray, and lawlessness will increase, and the love of many would grow cold. (Matthew 24:7).

So when we look at the kind of behavior going on all over the world at the moment there is a heightened activity of people accusing one another, and violent disagreement over ideologies and medical and lifestyle and political opinions. All of this gets more heightened by the sensationalism of the media and the weird conspiracy theories broadcasted over social media. And it is difficult for people to remain objective in times like this because we often don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are, but we can still discuss and debate without aggression and antagonism.

THE TURNING POINT – LIGHT AND POWER God does not want us as his Church family in the earth to live in the shadow and darkness of self-opinionated hostility as so many are doing in this world, because it is the devil’s work - Diabolos – to throw missiles of destruction that scatter and create hostility and division about opinions and dogmas and ideologies. That has always caused the church to lose its real power to be a light to the world in bringing God’s healing and transforming of lives. It is the work of The Spirit in us to make us one with God and with one another, and to transform lives, and to be his light in the world.

God’s light in his people can overcome darkness in these days. There is a swirl of redemptive God activity around you when your light is defeating the darkness in someone else. We wait with the ONE who knows all things, in the midst of an age full of unknowns and opposing views. God is at work in and through us by his Spirit in ways beyond our understanding as he reveals truth, his way, to the hearts of men and women everywhere, through our faithful trust in him. Jesus taught against antagonism and hostility to those who were different to us ethnically and culturally and socially and politically. He taught us about who was our neighbour in the parable of the good Samaritan. He taught us to love our enemies; Matthew 5:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

That is a principle of the cross, dying to things like division amongst ourselves as his family, and dying to hostility to others who do not know God, and growing in our faith and trust in God as our Father in Heaven. We know what and who we have faith in when we can name the one in whom we have absolute trust. I am grateful to the Lord for the times when I have found grace to have absolute trust in him in a matter, and to see his goodness come to pass beyond what I would have asked or thought, because I believe in this truth of surrender and in his faithfulness. And yet there are so many times when I think I have absolute trust in him and I find that residue of anxiety still there in my soul, and all I can say is that merciful verse in Mark 9:23 … Lord I believe, help my unbelief. And he remains faithful and we learn to trust even more. Jesus had absolute trust in his Father and he died and came alive again in order to live within us by the Holy Spirit and to impart into our hearts that same absolute trust in the nature of God.

True transformation means that we sometimes have to pay the price of dying to self by not having our opinion agreed with, or by losing a debate about what civil duty means or by forgiving someone who judges us unjustly. We stay on the journey of dying to ill will between ourselves and others and coming alive in absolute trust in God’s love to bring peace and good will out of division and chaos. This can be how light comes in to darkness and powerfully results in someone finding truth.

While we face the uncertainty of events in this world, which is God’s appointed way for us at this time in history, we put all fear aside as we live with the certainty of being led and guided by the peace of God in his world of the unseen, the world of faith and hope that is energized by his love to us and through us. Philippians 2:1 Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life Shining as lights means having God on display in our lives, not in a pious or religious way, but by simply living in the flow of the powerful love of God.

1Peter 3:8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult, but on the contrary, bless, for you were called to this, that you may also obtain a blessing.

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THE STRUGGLES OF LIFE

Life holds many struggles for us and indeed life itself is a struggle, right from the start; we struggle to be born into this world, and then we struggle to overcome the many obstacles to survival and security and satisfaction. There are the natural or outer struggles that we all have to deal with that belong to the outward circumstances of our lives and they are always in front of us every day. And there are the spiritual or inner life struggles that challenge us to grow in faith and trust in God. Our life is a journey in which we learn to know the difference between the outward natural struggles and the inner spiritual struggles, and we learn to choose which are the struggles worth having and which are not. 

Many of the stories in the Bible in the Old Testament were preparing us for the understanding of the New Testament truth of having both the natural and the spiritual natures within us and how spiritual transformation by the work of the Holy Spirit is from the natural self that started with Adam into the Spiritual self that was given to us through Jesus – That is the message of the Gospel – Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith.

Our natural self struggles with our spiritual self because both of these ‘selves’ have different desires. Galatians 5:17 the good things we want to do when the Spirit has his way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires. These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us, and our wishes are never free from their pressures.

One of these stories that is like a parable of the two selves within, the natural and the spiritual starts in Genesis chapter 25 with a struggle between twin boys, Jacob and Esau, who even at their birth appeared struggling to see who would be the first one to arrive into this world. The Bible says ‘First the natural and then that which is spiritual’ (1Corinthians 15:46). Esau was the first of the boys to be born but at the time of birth Jacob could be seen grasping on to Esau’s heel, as if to say ‘outa my way, I want to be first’. These boys were the sons of Isaac, who was the son Abraham, the father of the Hebrew Nation. Abraham was told by God that his descendants would inherit the Land of Canaan, the Promised land.  So as tradition had it in those days the firstborn son of Isaac received that Patriarchal blessing, which was revered as the highest of spiritual blessings. Esau was in line for he, and his descendants, to inherit all the Promises given to Abraham, and which is passed on down to us spiritually through Jesus. This inheritance was to be imparted at the end of Isaac’s life and when it was time to pass it on, and while Esau was out hunting at the time, Jacob cheated his blind Father and older brother by dressing in Esau’s clothes in order to smell and feel like his older brother and so fool Isaac into thinking that Jacob was his firstborn son Esau. When Isaac reached out to lay his hands on Jacob to impart the spiritual blessing he thought it was Esau, and this blessing could never be reversed. 

However Esau and Jacob had two very different longings in life. Esau was a man of the natural, the outdoors, who loved to hunt and to acquire the things of this world, and that is what he struggled for, while Jacob had a heart after God and longed to achieve the spiritual blessings of Abraham and that is what he struggled for. In fact, Jacob probably should not have felt too guilty because one day when they were younger, Jacob had even negotiated for Esau to swap his firstborn Patriarchal blessing for some measly red soup of Jacob’s that Esau couldn’t take his eyes off. Their future life choices had already been embedded in their hearts.

But when Esau finally found out that Jacob had actually received the blessing in the way that he did, he was furious and set out to kill him, so Jacob’s next struggle was to escape the wrath of Esau. Isaac stepped in and reassured Jacob that it would all be okay, and sent Jacob away, telling him to head for Haran to visit his Uncle Laban who had two daughters, Rachel and Leah. Soon into the journey he stopped at a place called Bethel and rested. Despite the conniving struggle of Jacob to acquire the blessing God honoured Jacob’s longing heart for that spiritual blessing in a vision where The Lord speaks over him and confirms the blessing of Abraham to him with all of the promises of being a father to all of the Jewish nations.  Jacob went through further struggles to obtain his two wives Leah and Rachel and to ultimately father the twelve tribes of Israel.  Much later in his life on his journey back to the region of his inheritance with his wives and families and servants and cattle, his final struggle was his wrestle with God, who appeared in the form of the Angel of The Lord. Jacob told God that he would not let him go nor cease the struggle till God blessed him. Such was his longing for God’s blessing and his holding on that God finished the bout by touching Jacob’s hip and putting it out of its socket, leaving Jacob with a permanent limp. God then renamed Jacob ‘Israel’ which means ‘having power with God and struggling with God and prevailing’. God used those words over Jacob. 

When we compare the struggles of Jacob and Esau we see those two longings struggling within us. They represent the two sides of us, our Jacob self and our Esau self. They each wanted different types of blessings. Esau reached out eagerly to struggle for worldly blessing to fill his life while Jacob reached out eagerly to struggle for spiritual blessing to fill his life. 

OUTER STRUGGLES Everybody has to deal with the outer struggles of life, and for most people this is the only struggle that counts because it mostly deals with the material things of life that they need and want. These things include physical health and well-being, financial security, leisure and recreation and aspirational goals of personal achievement. We all struggle for many of these things, but they are not our highest order of struggle.

EXPECTATIONS  Most people try hard and struggle against the challenges to achieve results and they expect to get them and are pleased when they do. They expect challenges and competition and adjust their goals and expectations as they go. We all learn how to manage the world’s systems and some do better than others. Some prosper for the right reasons and others are greedy and still prosper but for the wrong reasons. In this world of outward struggle there are always disappointments and frustrations and we do our best to learn to live with them. 

These things are all part of the outer struggle of the circumstances of this world and are different to the inner struggle of the spirit. We all have both of these struggles waiting for us to engage with, but most people ignore the inner struggle of the spiritual life that we have been given to live and think that everything depends upon the management of the outer struggle of life, to have what we need or want or demand. 

But the Bible tells us that we have both an outer and an inner struggle, in a natural outer life and in an inner spiritual life. As we read before; ‘These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us, and our wishes are never free from their pressures (Galatians 5:17)’.

By the grace of God we come to a time when the Esau nature in us to win the outward struggle yields to the Jacob nature in us to win the inner spiritual struggle. There are stories in the Bible of this change happening in the lives of people who were challenged to let go of the old life and to take on the new. The parable of the prodigal son shows us how a young man who had given himself to the longing for the things of this world would come to the end of himself and humbly decide to return to his father. 

There is also the story of Saul the Pharisee who was once arrogantly proud of his religious credentials and who was cruelly persecuting the followers of Jesus when he was stopped in his tracks by a blinding light. And he saw a vision of Jesus who spoke to him with words that penetrated his heart, turning his life around to fully follow him.  

And when Jacob struggled with God and had his hip joint put out Jacob’s heart was filled not only with blessing but with a desire to walk with God, and so he did walk with God, and ended up walking with a limp. The limp reminded him that every step he took showed him his own human weakness and his dependence upon God’s strength, and it reminded him of his commitment to go through any struggle to receive the blessing of God in his life, over and above any blessing that the world could offer.  That is a shadow of the longing of The Holy Spirit to give us that desire to struggle for the blessing of living out from the inner life of Jesus within us. The Holy Spirit shows us that we also walk with the limp of weakness, our humanity, and we struggle to hold on to God as our strength. The struggle to hold on to God also involves the letting go of things of the world. It is hard to hold on to two things at once, like holding on to God and holding on to resentment and other harmful attitudes in the heart. We end of letting go of one or the other.

An excerpt from ‘The Problem of Pain’ by C.S. Lewis

My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happiness’s look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over. I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.

So in the world of the outer struggle against the tribulations of this present time of global pandemic, where everything has changed everywhere for everybody at the same time, we are seeing an increase of fear and anxiety in many people concerning the necessary things of life; safety and security and wellbeing.  This is changing the nature of peoples’ expectations. What and who do people trust? This brings people to a point of choosing what kind of struggle to take on, and that choice is all about what to hold on to and what to let go of. Esau’s struggle was to conquer life by holding on to his own strength and not letting go of the things of the world that end up bringing so much stress and anxiety. The Bible calls Esau a ‘profane’ man which means not having regard to the things of God and it warns us not to go the way of Esau. Hebrews 12:16 Watch out that no one becomes careless about God as Esau did: he traded his blessing as the oldest son for the pleasure of a single meal

When people are not able to let go of things or are deprived of things they want or demand to have, it brings resentment, and we are seeing much of this in these days in which we live and the reaction is to blame someone.  Being able to let go of things willingly, brings freedom and peace and the response is to thank someone. Jacob knew that life was a struggle anyway so why not let holding on to God be the struggle of his life. He learned to be able to let go of anything but never to let go of God.

Christianity is not about avoiding a struggling life; it’s about avoiding a wasted life.  It will mean holding on to God in times of uncertainty, and times of difficulty, but it also means holding on to a whole lot of faith and a whole lot of hope. We don’t try to make the Esau in us become polite and caring and never get resentful or angry – Esau has to get out of the way for Jacob. It was Jacob who stood toe to toe with God and understood that his weakness was the welcome sign for the strength of God to possess his heart and mind. If our hope is the same as the hope that the world has, then there is no basis for anyone in the world to ask us the reason for the hope we have. 1Peter 3:15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. Holding on to God is not a passive waiting around for something to happen but it is holding on to a loving Jesus toe to toe, with a full hope and expectation of God bringing his loving goodness into our lives.

Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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THE IMPORTANT THING notes

The important thing is to know what is the most important thing. The Bible speaks about Jesus being close friends of a man called Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary. Jesus would raise Lazarus from the dead and Mary would soon anoint feet of Jesus before his betrayal and his death on the cross. But prior to those events there is a story about Jesus being invited to have a meal in the home of Martha in Luke Chapter 10. Luke 10:38 Jesus was welcomed to go and enjoy a meal in the house of Martha. But Martha was left to to do all the preparation on her own while her sister Mary sat at Jesus’ feet taking in every word that he said. Martha became stressed and upset with her sister Mary, and so she approached Jesus and said, “ Lord, don’t you care (melo – to realize it matters!) that my sister has left me to tend to all this work on my own? So tell her to help me.” And Jesus answered and said to her, “ Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed (chreia – most important – a must), and Mary has chosen that (most) important thing, and that can never be taken away from her.

There are a number of important things happening here. Martha thought that what she was doing, in preparing and serving up a meal was an important thing. Martha also thought that having someone to help her prepare was an important thing. Jesus would have appreciated the care that Martha had put into the preparation of the dinner and been blessed by that, but he was concerned about Martha’s attitude of resentment and judgment towards her sister Mary and himself that they were not being considerate of her. Martha thought that Jesus did not think that what she was doing was important, that he didn’t care – that it didn’t really matter. Imagine telling God that he should get his priorities right about what really matters.

Jesus had to address Martha, but not to scold her; He loved her and Mary as sisters, as he loved their brother Lazarus as a brother (John 11:5). He wanted Martha to be healed from anxiety and stress and to enjoy the caring good work she was doing. He was not telling Martha that she should have ordered a takeaway meal and sat on the floor with Jesus and her sister, but to do the good thing she did with grace. He also knew that Mary needed to choose that time at his feet for the inner healing of her own soul and spirit. The Bible tells us that Mary who anointed the feet of Jesus before his betrayal was a woman whom Jesus healed from deep inner torment (John 12 and Luke 7).

The point of what I’m wanting to say today is this; We all have some Martha in us and some Mary in us. There is the doing self and the being self, and each one has its time and place. Many of the stories that Jesus told were preparing us for the understanding of the New Testament truth of having both the natural and the spiritual natures within us and how spiritual transformation is from the natural self from Adam into the Spiritual self through Jesus. The Bible doesn’t tell us that there was anyone else in the room that day a Martha’s house – Lazarus isn’t mentioned and neither is anybody else - There were just three people in the room – and as far as this story goes there are always three people in the room – Jesus and the Martha and the Mary within us. That busy Martha living in me attacks my soul peace and tells me that I’m not doing enough even when I’m busy doing things that I think are worth doing. My inner Mary self allows my soul peace to be restored but still has to learn to not get under condemnation or guilt and to enjoy sitting with Jesus, knowing that it is the best choice at that time and that it is always available.

I felt God saying to me in one of my ‘Mary sitting with Jesus’ times recently to resist the urge to get up and try to do some worthwhile thing, but to wait for something that he would bring before me to respond to - rather than for me to initiate anything. I found it was a challenge but it was a real blessing to be waiting and ready to respond and to come from that place of stillness rather than the place of being ‘distracted with many things’. Then the work that really matters comes from Jesus and not my busy self-effort self.

It is hard for us in our humanity to always strike the right balance but we need to hear the words of love that Jesus was saying to Martha and to Mary as his beloved sisters. I was reading again how Jesus thought of us as his brothers and sisters and how he also said ‘I now call you friends and not servants’ (John 15). So I asked Jesus the other day how I should worship him and I felt that he said to me ‘just be my brother and my friend; don’t get too religious. I am here for you and you can be here for me and we can worship the Father together in our spirit, and do the things that please him, the things that really matter’. The BiBle says that he worships his Father along with us and together we will sing his praises (Hebrews 2:12)

So it means that whether busy or quiet, we do it all unto the Lord. Jesus went to that house with healing in his heart. On his journey to his death he was always bringing to us his resurrection power and his healing. I have felt in these Covid times we have been afforded more opportunity to sit quietly with The Lord and to wait for him to arise with healing in his wings. Amen

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There is a generally accepted definition of adultery which is in line with the Scriptures and it is ‘Unlawful sexual intercourse with married people’ – So this now depends upon what ‘Unlawful’ means

Lawful can change but what does not change is the spirit of adultery. It was lawful for Sarah to give Hagar to Abraham to have a child because if a woman was barren she could give her handmaid to her husband as a surrogate mother. It is unlawful in most of western society for a man to have two wives – bigamy, but it is not unlawful to commit adultery, but it used to be grounds for divorce in Australia till 1975. There are legal definitions of adultery in the American States of N Carolina, Minnesota and Virginia. And the commandment itself, and the spirit of adultery, or infidelity takes a lot more into account. Jesus once again expanded on this commandment in the sermon on the mount.

Jesus once again expanded on this commandment in the sermon on the mount.

Matthew 5:27-28. 'You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not commit adultery." 28. 'But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire to have her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

From what Jesus said in that Scripture we can see that it deals with the whole sphere of unfaithfulness or infidelity, wrong desires, and excessive self-indulgence.

The self-indulgence part is one of the biggest factors that drives the rest because the commandment is about commitment to another person and their needs. Excessive self indulgence is about no one else’s needs but our own.

DOES PROSTITUTION COME INTO THE CATEGORY OF ADULTERY?

Prostitution more of an expression of the next commandment – number eight, because it is as much about materialism as relational infidelity - It’s the money for the prostitute but the spirit of adultery for the man/woman.

IS PORNOGRAPHY PART OF COMMANDMENT SEVEN?

In the sexual area pornography seems to top the list. It is an addictive behavior that allows a person to isolate themselves and be gratified rather than engage meaningfully in fulfilling relationships and be satisfied. Also in the area of sensual gratification and outside of the sexual area are found things like over-eating, and drug abuse which includes alcoholism, and the abuse of prescription drugs, as well as the abuse of narcotics, and stimulants. At first glance, these pursuits and activities might seem to be rather 'private' habits, which do not involve causing harm to other people, but really they destroy themselves, their families and everyone else in their world.

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COMMANDMENT TO BLESS

There is a story in the Book of Numbers in chapters 20 to 24 which tells of Israel coming to the plains of Moab just east of the Jordan River and opposite Jericho. It was towards the end of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness and just before the death of Moses. They would later cross the Jordan under the leadership of Joshua, but at this time under Moses the Israelites had already defeated two powerful kings in that area of the Jordan - Sihon the king of the Amorites and Og the giant king of Bashan.

Balak the king of Moab was in great dread of the multitudes of the people of Israel as they marched relentlessly onwards, sending up huge dust clouds that could be seen from afar. Balak had heard of the devastating defeats of the other nations and had heard the reports of the supernatural help that Israel’s God had given to them, and Balak said to his elders, ‘This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.’ and he sent some of his elders to procure a man called Balaam for him. Balak had figured that it would take supernatural power to defeat Israel’s supernatural God so he hired Balaam, a non-Israelite who was a notable ‘seer’, with a gift of divination whom he would have calculated was the equivalent of Moses, the prophet leader of Israel. He arranged for Balaam to be given a handsome ‘fee of divination’ by the elders of Moab to curse Israel. He said to Balaam ‘I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed’. It is reported in many Jewish writings that Balaam had prophesied that Balak would become the king of Moab.

But God spoke to Balaam and told him not to go with the elders to curse Israel because he had given his blessing to Israel. So Balaam sent the elders back to Balak with the message that God had given him. Balak then sent a greater delegation of even more honourable princes with greater enticement and honour to be bestowed upon Balaam for him to curse Israel. God came again to Balaam and told him that if Balak’s men came to him he should go with them but to resist the offer of Balak and to only say what God put in his mouth to say.

God sent an angel to warn Balaam to not deviate from what God had instructed him. The Bible says that God had seen perversity in the heart of Balaam so he had to warn him again. The angel needed to get Balaam’s attention so he pressed Balaam’s donkey against the wall of a narrow pathway that they had to pass through on his way to make his proclamation over Israel, and the donkey became stuck, whereby Balaam flogged the donkey three times until the donkey had a most extraordinary conversation with Balaam and complained of such harsh treatment after all of his years of faithful donkey service. This strange going on opened the eyes of Balaam to see the angel of The Lord standing in the narrow pathway and it was too much for Balaam, so he said to the angel of the LORD, ‘I have sinned, for I did not know that you stood in the road against me. Now therefore, if it is evil in your sight, I will turn back.’ And the angel of the LORD said to Balaam, “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you.” So Balaam went on with the princes of Balak. That conversation that Balaam had with the donkey would win the vote of being the strangest conversation in the Bible. It shows what lengths God will go to in order to get our attention to let us know that he has given commandment for the blessing of his people.

Then the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth and said, ‘Return to Balak, and this is what you shall speak; God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot reverse it… The LORD their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them.

So Israel went on to become a nation greatly blessed of God and went across the Jordan into the Promised Land and took the territory that God had promised to them through Abraham. But in all the years that they lived under God’s Covenant and under his blessing they were never called to bless those other nations or become ‘evangelical’ by gathering nations to themselves, but rather to stay separate from them.

This might seem strange considering that God told Abraham that he would bring God’s blessing to all the nations of the earth through his offspring. But the fact is they have brought the greatest blessings to all nations through the seed of Abraham – Jesus. It was not the call upon the nation of Israel to bless the nations of the world in their time under their Covenant. It was only through Jesus as the most perfect and complete blessing, that Israel could have bestowed blessing upon mankind, and when Jesus came he bestowed mankind with that blessing of his life to us all.

God’s commandment to bless now comes through Jesus to us. Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

No curse of evil will ever reverse that blessing of our inner spiritual life even in times of outward affliction and hardship. God has given commandment to bless us with all spiritual blessings through Jesus, and he will find ways to bless us that we could not even imagine, even within the disorder and disaster of this age in which we now live. The devil is using his missiles of fear and resentment and anger and violence in today’s world, caught in the middle of a global pandemic, and all of these weapons of darkness add up to a commandment of cursing upon a humanity made in the image of God. God is pouring out his love and peace and faith and hope into the hearts of his people, also in the midst of the same global affliction, and all of these are God’s arrows fired from his bow of love and they add up to being blessed in Christ with all spiritual blessings.

And not only have we received God’s command OF blessing but we have received God’s commandment TO bless God’s blessing to Israel came in the form of territory, the Promised Land of Canaan, but God’s blessing to us and through us is not the physical territory of land but the spiritual territory of the heart. He wins the territory of our hearts by his love and we win the territory of peoples’ hearts in the same way. God has ordained for his imperfect people through Jesus to release the perfect blessing of Jesus and to bless all the nations of the earth.

That is why the Bible says to us ‘Be perfect as God in Heaven is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). ‘Being perfect as he is perfect’ is an act of faith that allows us as imperfect people to relate to a perfect God that we cannot see, where the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit can bless those we know and love, or strangers that God sends our way for him to bless. He has given commandment to bless and he will not reverse it. Those things are waiting to happen to us all the time wherever we are, and they happen to us unexpectedly and uninvited. And we might not always feel prepared and ready like We might find things landing upon us when we would rather get on with what we want to be doing at any particular time, not realizing that Jesus is indeed still really perfect at that moment, ready to do his perfect will in our life and for our life and through our life. He hasn’t forgotten and become distracted with other weightier matters. It becomes a matter of thinking about what is going on between us and God at that moment of time, and that he has not changed.

And we need to reassure ourselves that nothing we do will ever look perfect on the outside. It is not like being an Olympic diving champion and diving a perfect ten off a ten metre-high tower. It is like being an ordinary human being that is trying to stay afloat and swim the distance.

We can turn a simple act of care and good will in what seems like a very ordinary moment, into a moment of God’s perfect spiritual work of goodness and grace, like being kind to an ungrateful person or helping someone who is in need but who maybe really isn’t in need. That has not been a waste of time. It requires awareness and faith and hope. God is there waiting to love someone who doesn’t deserve it like we didn’t deserve it, and he is very patient and eager to endue us with power from on high to be used by him in this way. That is why he sent the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just for church. Jesus didn’t just go to the churchgoers but to the outcasts and sinners who weren’t even allowed in the temple. He met them where they were and the power of The Holy Spirit was released.

Jesus comes to us in these moments disguised as our everyday life. That is why the Bible speaks about Jesus saying on the day of judgment ‘I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…And they replied when did we see you thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, And the King will answer them, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Those things we have done in partnership with Jesus through the Holy Spirit will accompany us into the age to come. That is what it means by storing up treasures in Heaven.

I don’t think this is easy and it takes practice to develop a keen awareness that God is with us, because there is so much that we have to process that presses in upon the narrow pathway of our everyday challenges of life that takes over our souls. So we can practice how to stop and reflect at that moment of challenge to consider what is really going on in the powerful realm of God’s perfection alongside our imperfection and that makes us rethink about what is going on between us and God – our ordinary life in partnership with his extraordinary life that desires to bless the world and draw them to himself through his people.

We get our minds off our weakness and onto him and his strength, as Paul tells us what God said to him when Paul was becoming weakened under attack from Satan ‘My grace is sufficient for you – My strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2Corinthians 12:8) - and that is what leads to the faith that assures us that God is at work mightily on our behalf.

We are living in days when God is shining a light to our path and bringing light into the darkness, and order into the midst of disorder. He is commanding his blessing in the midst of an outpouring of what could seem like cursing in the way many people are affronting and insulting one another in these contentious times. But no matter how much the enemy wants to spiritually defeat us through all this, God’s will to bless his people and for his people to be his blessing to others will be seen triumphing over those destructive and evil strategies of malevolence and ill will.

We learn to wait ON God to receive the faith and the peace that he is at work, while we actively seek to bless, but we also learn to wait FOR God and his timing to reveal his supernatural activity, and as we move forward faithfully, waiting for God, with our eyes on the horizon of faith, God appears as a sunrise that rises above that horizon, and reveals what he is doing and what he has done that only he can do as he commands the blessing. Amen

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GOD’S WRATH AND RECONCILIATION AND GOSPEL

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed (apokalypto – uncovered) from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Note; This is present tense)

God’s wrath is an act of love nested in justice and truth as well as in mercy and forgiveness. God’s wrath (orge – intense feeling of indignation) is an expression of his protection of humanity against the destructive effects of sin that we commit against each other. The main causes of the pain and harm that we inflict upon one another are the corruption of Justice and truth in the misuse of power over each other and our malevolent attitudes towards one another. This protective indignation of God is dealt out through his discipline upon us individually and corporately. This expression of God’s justice goes hand in hand with God’s offer of his mercy and forgiveness to all the world which brings about his great acts of redemption and reconciliation with all mankind. So he exercises his discipline like a loving Father upon us as his children to change our character and very nature to be like his own. That has to be proclaimed, and that is the reason for the absolute necessity of the Gospel.

The nature of God’s wrath is also that it is revealed (apokolypto), which means that it acts by uncovering the sin of injustice and the suppression of truth that is occurring in the world. The Bible shows us how God has acted upon the world throughout history as a loving Father to intervene when we go off track and to bring us back to himself, such as with the flood of Noah’s time and with the judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham’s time. These have also been times of God’s gracious intervention and deliverance of those faithful to him, as with Moses bringing God’s people out of Egypt and the time of their entering into the promised Land under Joshua. The greatest of all interventions in a time of injustice and suppression of truth was the Incarnation of Jesus as the living God who came to us to give us his life and his heart of love to the Father through the Holy Spirit.

We are currently living in a time of a rapid escalation of the corruption of justice and truth in our world. The Godly values which used to be a foundation of our society have been replaced in many cases with ideological values and virtues that compete with one another for a place of influence and political power.

God is allowing many areas of injustice and suppression of truth to be uncovered (apocolypto) and to come under his hand of discipline, and in a widespread communal crisis like a pandemic where people do not know what to trust or who to trust anymore that uncertainty becomes a crisis of anxiety concerning the future. It also becomes a crisis of anxiety concerning a scarcity of outward things that were once expected to be on hand but are now often not even within reach. In an environment like that suspicion and blame and resentment is out there, and it is at times like this where God counters all of that negative activity with a Gospel of hope and an abundance of grace where God is always within reach and peace can abound in our inner lives.

God created us to be at one with him – that is, to be at peace with him (Eirene – peace – oneness). And even more than that, to be sharing in his divine nature. God lived in perfect oneness and harmony as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where there was perfect love and perfect agreement. There was no need for forgiveness there because there was no sin of selfishness from one against the other, so there was no wrath because there was no sin, and there was no temptation because perfect love cannot be tempted. That was the perfect way to live in a perfect relationship.

So what happened? Why couldn’t God create us as very nice people who loved one another with the same love that Father and Son and Holy Spirit have? Because only God is perfect and anyone and anything he creates is not perfect, and even the angels who are spirit beings are not perfect, and as we know, they are able to be tempted, like Lucifer. He was deceived into thinking he could have what he wanted without God, and so he became proud and independent and rebelled against God. And he deceived mankind into thinking the same way.

It is obvious really - We believe a lie about who God is and what he is like and then we believe a lie about who we are as an independent self with a right to have certain things, and then we rebel against the authority that stops us getting what we want, and then we become disobedient and miss the mark of staying close to God and then we sin, and sin runs the show from there, causing harm to our own soul and to the people around us.

God hates sin because it separates us from him AND it destroys our soul. Isaiah 59:1 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. Only he can do something about that. Left to themselves people wander off track. So what does God do?’

He uncovers all the disorder and corruption that is waiting to be exposed for his purpose of shaking and converting the minds and hearts of people who have resisted him.

God’s love feels the grief of the hostility of his children against him, and the pain and destruction that that hostility brings upon them. And that is all because our human independent mindset of a lie about what God is like robs us of the truth of his loving heart of goodness and blessing towards us.

His heart is constantly seeking to subdue or overcome that hostility and soften our hearts and to make us aware of his love. How much would his love delight in there being a heart of love in the earth that loved him back as much as is humanly possible (like Jesus).

Also nested in his love is God’s offer of forgiveness and mercy. We need this change of heart to get out of the ‘sin cycle’. We have to be rescued from the law of sin and death and receive his Spirit of life in Jesus. God has forgiven sin AND he does change the desire of our hearts to love him more than sin, and yet we still see the hostility of humanity against him happening in our human hearts.

Only God can do something about that – we can’t. He cancelled out the sin factor of humanity that separated us from him and that allows us to be close to him and to love him back.

RECONCILIATION God had to bring about reconciliation because our distrust towards God was too great an obstacle for our hearts to reach out to him. So if God wanted peace and oneness only he could put away this estrangement between man and God. It had to be all his work. And he was already perfect so he couldn’t make himself become more perfect. So what was he to do? Instead of remaining in his perfection of Heavenly Being who could not be tempted, he entered into our weakness as a human being who could be tempted. He came down as Jesus and so Father in Heaven had a Son in the Earth who was indwelt by his Spirit, and who could and would love him totally on behalf of all of us. But how does this change the rest of us, because we are still human beings who still can’t trust God because we never have?

A simplistic way to see the heart of reconciliation is this; Two friends who have fallen out decide to try and make up and bury the hatchet. Then one of them who has a very generous heart says ‘look I care deeply about our friendship and I want you to know that anything you might have done to offend me I forgive you for’. He then goes on to say ‘so are we good?’ and the other one replies ‘yes we’re good - thanks’ That is reconciliation – it’s not a blame game.

That is where the miracle of God’s supernatural reconciliation comes to pass. He not only changed himself into one of us, he changed us into one of him. He died like a seed going into the ground and he rose like a plant springing up from the ground, a resurrected tree of life that bore fruit which was us as a New Creation humanity. We have his resurrected life sent from Heaven as the Holy Spirit who joins our spirit to the Spirit of God. We can now have Jesus’ heart of love for his Father. That is reconciliation.

The word reconciliation in the Bible is katalasso – that means a mutual change of two things to make one new thing. The supernatural miracle of God’s act of reconciliation for us is that he caused both himself and us to experience a change of being. God became one of us – forever – as the risen Christ in Heaven, and he has made us one with him because the Bible says we are ‘partakers of his divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through sinful desires’ (2Peter 1:4) That is the Gospel of Peace – oneness – that is what Paul preached. Paul was not told to tell the world to make peace with God, but to tell the world that God has made peace with them. 2 Corinthians 5:19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting men's sins against them but blotting them out. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others… That is the message of the Gospel – Accept the forgiveness of God through Jesus and begin to walk in a new way.

There are examples of Jesus demonstrating both God’s wrath and his reconciliation as he walked among the people and ministered to them. There is the story of the Jewish elders who approached Jesus and brought forward a woman who had been caught in adultery, and they placed her in front of Jesus and told him that the Law of Moses commanded them to stone such women. They asked Jesus what he had to say about that. The wrath of God was revealed (apocalypto – uncovered) upon these men as Jesus began to write in the sand, uncovering their sins before all that were there watching. Each of the men walked off in shame and guilt. Then Jesus turned to the woman and the reconciliation of God was ordained upon her as her sins were not charged to her but were forgiven. In a similar way in the Gospel of John chapter 4, Jesus was sitting by a well and a Samarian woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her to please draw some water for him to drink as he was thirsty. On this occasion God’s wrath was nested in his love as a most effective tough love wake-up call about her disordered life. When Jesus said to her ‘you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband’ the woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet’. But Jesus did not berate her or condemn her. Jesus had just told her that he could give her more than just the water from the well, and that he could give her the living water of the Holy Spirit that would spring up within her, and she had said ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty’. So in that story we have both tough love wake-up call of God’s wrath uncovering her moral disorder, and the magnanimous bestowal of reconciliation in the promise of her being filled with the living water of the life of God. Her human weakness was her thirst for love which she could never emotionally gratify, and that was satiated not only emotionally but now spiritually by God’s love flowing within.

If you begin to search you will find many examples of God’s wrath and God’s reconciliation coming forth through the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels. A clear case of God’s wrath is seen in Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables in the temple uncovering the corruption and injustice of the Jewish stewards by overcharging the poor people and making a profit from the sale of the birds and animals required by law for the temple sacrifices for sin. He was expressing his Father’s indignation against this corrupt abuse of power over the people in this holy place of prayer. Notice how often the wrath is tempered by love and sadness. For example in the story of Jesus uncovering the sin of the rich young ruler’s love of money, there was great sadness as he walked away from the offer to follow Jesus. There is also the beautiful example of both wrath and reconciliation in the story of the prodigal son. Let me read this beautiful Scripture from Romans where all that I have been sharing is encapsulated. Romans 5:8 God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us … having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him, for if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. That solves the problem of God’s wrath from his side – and now it is up to us to believe and to trust in that every moment of our lives. That is the faith that saves our soul.

THE GOSPEL Because of God’s love, his wrath is a significant reality, and the very reason from God’s point of view for making the Gospel so necessary and powerful. He hates the bad news of what sin does to people so he has good news about what forgiveness and reconciliation does for people.

That is why there has to be a Gospel – both for those who wilfully do harm and for the poor people who get harmed. The good news is that there is forgiveness and the further good news is that there is the gift of the life of Jesus within. He gives us a new spirit - he gives us his Spirit and he gives us a new heart.

People need to be told they are forgiven, and that they need no longer be separated because of the feelings of guilt and shame about their sinful behaviour, which makes them hide from God and cover up in front of each other. They need to have a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance. The new mindset acknowledges that God is not at odds with them and they no longer need to be at odds with him. They are reconciled. They cannot have everything that they want, but they can receive every good thing that God wants for them. They are now able to have God’s peace. They are now able to trust God. They can now know what it means to be saved. And they also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation.

Sometimes people need a wakeup call, and God is giving the world a wakeup call right now. It is like the story of the prodigal son who had to have things go so bad for him that he came to his senses and said ‘I will go home and return to my father’. He decided to settle the score with his conscience and to return to his father before the consequences of his life brought him complete ruin.

I believe that in these days God wants to grow his Church as his loving and caring family that will find its voice to proclaim a loving and forgiving God who desires to turn the heart of the world to himself - all of his sons and daughters, created in his image . Lost sheep will be found and prodigal sons and daughters will come home. The healing rain of the Holy Spirit will fall upon the hearts of men and women and grace will abound. People will call on the name of The Lord and be saved. They will receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of God. He will strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner being. He will do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power of his life that he has placed within us. Amen

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GOD’S LOVE AND BLESSING AND WRATH

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God after being tempted by Lucifer the first thing they did was to hide from God in the garden, and they covered themselves with fig leaves. That was the beginning of a mistaken mindset of hiding from a God whom they thought was angry and was now going to punish them for doing wrong. The fig leaves were a useless way of covering up their shame and guilt for doing wrong. That was not God’s way of thinking, and he needed to change that mistaken mindset. God told Adam to come out into the open and talk to him. He was going to cover Adam with the skin of an animal (lamb, ram, sheep, goat?) to replace the useless fig leaves. So God shed blood and covered Adam. This is a prophetic picture for us of God providing Jesus as a blood sacrifice for the sins of humanity. This blood sacrifice covers the shame and guilt we all experience as sinful human beings, and the fig leaves represent our futile attempts to cover our shame of exposure by covering up for ourselves instead of letting God’s mercy cover our shame.

Without a mindset of faith and trust in God for this, we will always live at a distance from God and hide like Adam because of shame and guilt instead of coming close to him through his loving mercy and forgiveness. That was the beginning of a lesson from God to us, that he does not want us to hide from whom we think is an angry God that wants to punish us. He wants us to know that we do not have to hide who we really are with our weak and frail humanity but to let him redeem us with his sacrificial love - the sacrificial lifeblood that he shed for us then and always.

God used another prophetic picture of sacrificial lifeblood for us when he told Abraham to offer his only son Isaac on an altar. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of countless children and in him all the families in the earth would be blessed. Abraham had to wait 25 years for the promise of a son to be fulfilled and then he was told to offer him as a sacrifice (It is believed that Isaac was a teenager at the time). Abraham was about to plunge the knife into Isaac when God at the last moment stopped him and provided a ram (lamb?) for a sacrifice. But this time he added the dimension of faith, where Abraham had to trust God to the utmost limit, that he would provide the sacrifice. Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, was in the act of offering up his only son … He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, in a manner of speaking, he did receive him back. This was a different lesson for us. This is the lesson of faith in the promise of God through Jesus to bring to pass the promise of his resurrection life to us when we take up our cross and trust in him by surrendering our will to his will. Without a mindset of faith and trust in God for this, we will always live at a distance from God instead of coming close to him in hope and expectation of his goodness to us.

In the first three hundred years after Jesus the early Church Fathers like Athanasius and Irenaeus spoke powerfully about this redeeming and lifegiving work of God through Jesus which restores close heart-to-heart and trusting fellowship between us and the Father. Then soon after that, Augustine, who was in fact a devoted heart-to-heart disciple of Jesus, began to use Greek philosophical language to describe God in terms of his ‘essence’. Then came further well-meaning descriptions of God’s exalted attributes like Omnipotence and Omniscience, which mean ‘all powerful’ and ‘all knowing’, and it is inspiring to realize these awesome qualities. However if these attributes are all we are told about who God is we could perceive him as distant and judgmental and non-relational instead of intimate and loving and forgiving.

The Roman Catholic and Judaistic legal mindset and the Greek philosophical style of thinking inadvertently allowed there to develop from all of that a tendency for many people to see God as an all-powerful God that was waiting to punish us if we disobeyed his set of rules.

When this kind of thinking is taken to its extreme it gets lived out as legalistic Christianity, and this extreme has influenced Christianity throughout the centuries. It oppresses God’s people through a misuse of authority and power.

The other extreme is that God is an easy-going person who wants to gratify his needy children with whatever personal comfort and spiritual accessories that would help make life on this earth more bearable, until we can have a nice mansion in Heaven.

In between these two extremes of legalism and self-gratification sits the weighty reality of God’s wrath. God’s wrath is a profound expression of God’s protective love towards his children – it is his intense indignation against sin and its harmful destructive effect upon humanity (like a mother bear defending her cub).

The beginning of God’s wrath Satan is the classic example of the extremes of both of the two bad postures of legalism and sinful self-serving gratification. Lucifer abused his place of authority as a covering angel (Ezekiel 28:14) and brought temptation into humanity’s appetite to gratify itself by offering Adam and Eve a taste of independent self-serving autonomy and causing them to despise God’s goodness towards them. In doing this he brought deathly oppression upon all of humanity.

What indignation would this cause God’s heart, to see such deadly sinister deception cause so much harm and destruction to his sons and daughters! The wrath of God plays out in the awful consequences of harmful and destructive sin, missing the mark of oneness with God – all starting with deception, rebellion and pride. Can you imagine from God’ point of view, giving us the gift of life and watching it turn against him as he has to let it play out in repulsive and offensive and destructive behaviour.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed (apokalypto – uncovered) from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Note; This is present tense)

God’s wrath is being revealed or put on display around us in the world, in the harmful and destructive personal and political and ideological conflicts that are shredding peoples’ souls and causing such grief and loss and misery and pain. History has repeated itself over and over and we find ourselves in this day and age in a suffering world separated for the most part in mind and heart from God, but he still remains faithful. Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Wrath only came into existence because of sin, and sin is going on all the time.

Paul shows us the way of freedom – a way of living with sin, but above sin. Paul realised he had a problem and he said ‘It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I find that evil is present within me. Now if I am doing what I don't want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp. Who will ever get me out of this death trap?’ (Romans 7:20). Paul here is describing the ‘law of sin and death’ which is what we all live under. This law made him feel stuck in a pattern of wanting to do the right thing but ending up doing the wrong thing and then feeling guilty and cut off from God and his peace. His mind was full of all the mistakes and failures and this made him dread the consequences – what would God think and what would people think – he felt trapped and just wanted to hide. This is what the law of sin and death does. He and we want to hide from God, like Adam did.

That law of sin and death was like the law of gravity. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to jump up in the air to get higher, gravity pulls you down with a thud. Paul knew he couldn’t kid himself that he wasn’t a failure in his own natural strength, even though he achieved much as a legalistic Pharisee – he knew that didn’t count any more. He knew that as natural human being we are all failures as far as being spiritually perfect. He knew he had sin within him even when he wanted to do good! He knew he couldn’t pat himself on the back for being spiritual, and if he did he’d better watch out and not think more highly of himself than he ought to or he would come down with a thud. What a paradox. The Holy Spirit had given him the wonderful revelation of another law of the Spirit which overcame that law of sin and death. Romans 8:2 For the powerful law of the Spirit of Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death. Paul saw that the experience of being set free was not the absence of sin in him but the presence of God in him.

So there was only one thing to do - just hang on for dear life to the only perfect one and get lifted into a higher way, like having another natural law that could overcome the law of gravity, so that if you went up in the air you didn’t come down with a thud – you stayed up there. This is how the law of aerodynamics operates. When we fly in an aeroplane, we overcome the law of gravity, and in order to do that the plane must use two things, first, an enormous thrust from the engine and secondly, lift with the wings. The Holy Spirit gave Paul the wonderful revelation of another law of the Spirit which overcomes that law of sin and death, just like the law of aerodynamics overcomes the law of gravity. We need a different kind of power that we could ever humanly muster for the thrust, and we need wings that keep us in the air, like an eagle. An eagle was created to fly, and when we talk about a higher spiritual way for ourselves, we too were created to mount up with wings and fly like an eagle. So we have the thrust of the Holy Spirit combining with the spiritual aerodynamics of the wings of an eagle and we can live above the law of sin and death. God doesn’t motivate by fear or outside pressure but by inside inspiration from the Holy Spirit. So how do we live in this law of the Spirit of life and escape the law of sin and death. The Bible says that ‘they that wait upon the Lord will exchange their strength with his strength, they will rise up with wings of an eagle.

It is when we wait upon The Lord that we exchange our strength with his strength. We have our heart-to-heart conversation with him about what is going on inside of us. We bring him our confusion or distress or pain from the past, or our anxiety for the future, and we sit with all of this in his presence, and we do not hide from our feelings of shame and guilt, as much as we would like to run away from them and escape them if we could.

How does this make the problems lose their power over us? They simply have to move over because we are not focussing upon them but upon the greatest reality, which is that he desires a close relationship with us despite our weaknesses and failures, and he knows that our shame and guilt about those things make us feel separated from him.

A life hemmed in by the closed horizon of ourselves and our problems is too dismal to give our lives real meaning. Once we welcome the present moment which contains a present Jesus and give him that place in our minds and hearts, we understand what reality is all about. Instead of talking to ourselves in our lostness, we do the heart-to-heart talking with God and become found in him. Jesus is always seeking and finding and restoring with deep compassion all that is lost and broken in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Amen.

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FACING A NEW FUTURE

Facing the future is usually based on expecting things to keep on happening the same way that they have happened before. There is a consistent routine and we have a level of confidence and competence to manage that. If we have some worthwhile goal ahead, we can divert some extra energy away from some of the routine for that goal. But there are times like the strange times we are now in when the routine gets out of routine so much that we don’t know what to expect any more. Something bigger than our personal routine has taken over our circumstances so that it is difficult to make things happen that we did quite normally before. We have to know how to face a new future.

In normal times if something disruptive happens just to us personally, we seek help from those we can trust and we are grateful when help is given. We can have faith in God and look to the Lord for wisdom and guidance about how to see the challenge through so that we can recover and get our life back on track. But when something disruptive happens to everyone at the same time it is a different matter. A global pandemic is currently happening to everybody at once and there is no single answer we can get for ourselves to solve all the problems by simply asking someone to sort it out for us. There are thousands of different opinions and thousands of different reasons for them. We find that we no longer have the personal freedom to just sort out our own situation because something bigger than our personal set of circumstances has been disrupted. God alone has the answer for each one of us personally to find the way forward, and he has allowed this circumstance to happen for a reason – and notwithstanding all that, our praying for one another never fails. But the fact remains;

We are living at a time when we are each personally facing a new future. We are living at a time when the World is facing a new future.

This current time we are living in is marked by certain realities; A time of affliction and suffering has plunged our world into a weakened state. A spiritual attack from Satan is provoking reaction and confusion and division in peoples’ hearts. An uncertainty and a sense of hopelessness is in the air regarding the future. And in all this God’s people are being challenged to hear from him regarding how to face this new future.

There have been times in history where the World has entered a new era, a new eon (Grk. Aion – age). These times are significant for God’s people because they are primarily about what he wants to do through his people.

The birth of Jesus began a new eon (or age) for humanity. It was an appointed time of God in history. His death on the cross was also an appointed time of God for humanity, just as was his resurrection, and just as was his ascension into heaven, and just as was his sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Any appointed time of God in history is called a Kairos time, as opposed to chronos time which in simple terms has the meaning of ‘clock time’. Kairos time defines a time for God’s appointed purpose on the Earth. There would have been many Kairos times in your life when you knew that God was doing something unique for you or speaking something special to you. I believe we are in one of those unique times at the moment –

In this kairos time of God we are being shown how to come through an intense time of testing of our faith into a new future of hope and promise, while the whole World is in a weakened state. When God chooses HIS times to take us into a new future, Satan chooses that time to intensify his spiritual attack upon God’s people to stop us moving forward. Satan uses the times of our weakness to attack us in our weakened state and to try and get us to give up on God or deny him or reject him.

But Satan gets it wrong.

Satan gets it wrong even when it seems he has gained a victory. God knows that Satan’s pride and deception makes him think he can target our weaknesses to stop God’s purpose from happening in our lives. But God uses Satan’s strategy of attacking our weaknesses as an opportunity to turn our human weakness into his strength. Paul writes that when he was being buffeted by Satan in the times of his own weakness. He learned to find God’s strength and turn it into victory. (2Corinthians 12:8).

JESUS FACES THE FUTURE FOR GOD’S PEOPLE

Jesus went through the most grueling experience in his life and was at his physically weakest point after being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness and fasting for forty days and nights (a ‘number forty’ experience – a time of trial and testing – Moses and Elijah and Jesus all fasted for forty days and Israel went through forty years of testing in the wilderness). Jesus battled against the prince of darkness in a series of tormenting temptations as in, asking him why he didn’t just turn stones into bread and not go hungry, and why not prove his claim of being the Son of God by leaping off a cliff and letting the angels save him. Jesus won a mighty victory for himself and for all of us against this onslaught of Satan, who in the Bible is called ‘the god of this world’. This false god finally took Jesus onto the top of a high mountain and arrogantly offered him the rule over all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for Jesus falling down and worshipping him. His pride and deception had blinded Satan to the fact that Jesus was the heir of all the kingdoms in Heaven and Earth from before the beginning of time. Jesus dismissed the false god and put him in his place.

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministering to him.

Jesus then quietly rested from his ordeal on that mountain top and received comfort from the angels. Not only was he now set to begin his ministry of three and a half years of overcoming the darkness in the kingdoms of this world, but he was about to begin establishing the Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts of mankind, from that time on and into eternity. And after he was rested he moved his mind from that forty days of trial and affliction and he turned to face the future. The Bible tells us that as he set off to walk the journey home to his family in Galilee he came across the poor and the sick by the side of the road, as people were healed of blindness and infirmity and other diseases. His Father was unfolding his future before him step by step along the way.

Jesus showed us what to do. He stood against the deceptive affronts of Satan in his time of weakened strength and he overcame Satan through speaking God’s Word of truth concerning himself. He then sat and rested and became refreshed. He walked away from that season of trial and faced the new future that awaited him. The future presented itself to him, as he walked step by step along the way.

JOSHUA FACES A NEW FUTURE FOR GOD’S PEOPLE Joshua was also a man who had a ‘number forty’ experience His was not forty days but a long hard trial of endurance in Israel’s journey out of Egypt that took forty years – a generation. Joshua kept faith throughout those forty years under Moses and when Moses died God gave Joshua the leadership of the Nation of Israel.

When Joshua came to the Jordan River he ordered the priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the water and just as Joshua had witnessed the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea under Moses, the waters miraculously divided so that all of Israel could pass over and finally enter into the promised Land. Just as the Ark represented the presence of God for Israel, so Jesus is the presence of God for us.

Joshua 3:1 And they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. At the end of three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, “As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.” They were facing a new future and the wilderness was behind them. The promise of God for their lives was now before them. A ‘number forty’ experience is not just a time of the testing of our faith, it is the time of preparation for the facing of a new future. It is the same for us today, as we are also in a number forty experience of trial and testing and need to heed the words of Joshua to Israel when he told them to follow the Ark, the presence of God ‘that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.’

It is important to know that the devil did not set up the forty days of wilderness testing for Jesus. The Bible tells us that the Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tested – it was God’s doing. But Satan used that time of Jesus being pushed to the limits of endurance to try to break his spirit, and Satan failed. It was the same for Israel going through the forty years of testing in the wilderness – that was God’s doing, and Satan tried to prevent them entering the promised land, but a new generation under Joshua brought them into a new future of promise for their lives. It is the same with us – going through a global pandemic and being pushed to the limits of endurance. It is like a ‘number forty’ experience of trial and testing, and of promise! And God has allowed that and Satan jumps at the opportunity to break our spirit. But our struggle is more than just for survival. We are overcoming through a renewing of our strength into a new future in the will of God for our lives, and the future may present itself to us in unexpected ways as we walk forward step by step trusting in God.

Jesus did not complain once throughout his forty-day experience of his trials in the wilderness, but Israel did not stop complaining for the entire forty years of their trials, because of their unbelief. If we want to overcome in our time of trial and face a new future that God has for us, we need to know how to manage our emotional reactions to the new and unfamiliar disruptions that are happening to us – different to how our life usually unfolds. Being exposed to emotionally charged comments and opinions by opportunistic politicians, TV commentators, and the media (especially social media), can cause us to attach negative emotions of anxiety or disappointment or resentment to our thoughts on the matter. And while there is certainly a place for strong emotions to motivate creative and constructive activity, those negative and unhelpful emotions can rob us of our peace and throw us back into the Israel wilderness experience of unbelief. I find that when this happens to me I have to get my mind on God straightaway, because those negative emotions disappear in the presence of faith. We can live amongst the commotion and find peace, because like Jesus in his number forty experience, we have the Holy Spirit with us and the Word of God in us and we can be assured that he is at work on our behalf to guide us each step of the way.

We can be confident that we will hear God’s voice clearly amidst the many voices and personal opinions that seem to shout over and contradict one another in these days. Observe the things that come across your path directly – maybe small things or maybe big things - and ask God what you should do or think regarding that thing. It may be more important than you think, as different as it may seem from past practice – why is this interruption or intrusion happening at the moment? And as we pause at that time and still our hearts and give that moment and what is happening, to God, it could be that God will do something in our lives he has not done before. He presents a new future to us as he did with Jesus. And if that way that looks good for us to walk in seems to get blocked, we can ask God to part the waters in front of us while we keep our eyes upon him, as he goes before us. As Joshua said to the people ‘you have not passed this way before’.

Thankyou Lord, for leading us into a new future of victory, out of the times of trial and into the times of faith in Jesus name – Amen.

MEDITATIONS

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength (Isaiah 40:31)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. (Isaiah 43:2)

Do not be afraid for I am your shield and your everlasting reward (Genesis 15:1)

It is no longer I that live but it is Christ who is living in me (Galatians 2:20)

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)

I am with you always even till the end of the age (Matthew 28:20)

Be anxious for nothing but in everything let your prayers and requests be made known to God; and you will receive the peace of God (Philippians 4:4)

Be strong and of good courage, do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9)

Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid – My peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you (John 14:27)

All things are working together for good for those who love God (Romans 8:28)

I know the thoughts I have towards you for good and not for evil – to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest for you have found grace in my sight and I know you by name (Exodus 33:14)

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord (Psalm 37:23)

I have loved you with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3)

You will keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you (Isaiah 26:3)

My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness (2Corinthians 12:9).

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard · Nor has it entered into the heart of man · The things which God has prepared for those who love Him. (1Corinthans 2:9)

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This Commandment is about much more than murder or killing – It is about the killing of relationships through anger and lack of emotional control.

This commandment speaks about more than just the act of taking of life in general, but is concerned with the heart attitude of malice, which can start with frustration, then resentment, then even vengeance or letting hatred or some other hurtful intention harm another person. Jesus enlarged on this commandment in the sermon on the mount.

Matthew 5:21-24 It has been written in the commandment, "You shall not kill." And whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. 22. 'But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…'Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, 24. 'Leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

The transformational aspect of this Commandment is in forgiveness and reconciliation. And it also talks about bringing your gift to the altar, so it also looks like it involves an attitude towards God as well.

There is always the redemptive process of God on the positive side to transform us like all the commandments. This is in the context of people getting offended and angry – and that kills relationships and the remedy for that is this process of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The attitudes of relationship in Commandment five were about trust and care and that ties in with this Commandment. It is this the link between five and six.

In the last commandment (Number five) , which is about our relationship with authority, we saw that the problem with people, was the inability to trust another person to influence or direct their life – it started with parents and children This was because of self-determination, so that they could have their own way. And now we see that the person who has a mistrust of authority, will act out this mistrust with other people generally, and, still determined to have their own way, will behave in a way that is destructive of all relationships – so they get angry.

What are some of our defence mechanisms and how effective are they?

And what about our self -made relational or emotional defence mechanisms?

The most subtle and dangerous of our defense mechanisms are those negative relational ones that we use as weapons or as shields against other people – and there are three interesting ones like withdrawal, resistance, and aggression.

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WITH THE HEART MAN BELIEVES

There is a lot of speculation these days about what faith really is, especially among Evangelical Bible believing Christians - What to pray and how to pray, what to hope for and what to expect. Many things are being claimed by faith and do not come to pass and many get disappointed, and some think that God has forgotten them or didn’t hear their prayers. Is there something that maybe needs to change in our thinking about our faith? What in fact IS OUR faith? What do we believe and how do we believe?

The Bible says that with the heart man believes’ (Romans 10:10) so I would like to discuss today the matter of believing with the heart. I will start by saying that I personally have a very simple and straightforward approach to believing with my heart. There is an ongoing dialogue with God on a schedule of prayer concerns that sit in my heart and are being placed before him. I also believe that the Father knows what the cry of my heart is in any personal situations of my own and that Jesus will intercede on my behalf to the Father and that his will shall be done in my life for them. That way I am confident that God is doing the supernatural work and I try to stay at rest in my soul, ready to do what work The Holy Spirit prompts me to.

Our deepest beliefs and values and desires reside in our heart and flow out of our heart as the real issues of our life. The heart conveys who we are and what we do. Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life.

So how do those beliefs and values and desires get into the heart? Our heart is informed by our mind as to what it acknowledges as being true and of highest value to us and therefore worth living for.

However we will be discussing today the difference between what our natural rational mind informs our heart of in contrast to what our renewed ‘spiritual mind’ informs our heart of.

Our Natural mind As far as our natural rational mind is concerned, on the one hand it can certainly be convinced of high moral standards and virtues and aspire to those values and convince and persuade the heart so that there is an outflow of civility and decency in that person’s life. On the other hand the natural rational mind can be deceived into accepting corrupt or hurtful attitudes as being the most rewarding things to convince and persuade the heart of and they will become a destructive outflowing of that person’s life. We see the panorama of all of those states of the heart (including our own) being played out in the world around us (Mark 7:21. Jeremiah 17:9) The natural human mind is a wonder of God’s creative genius and it has brought into this world both great good and great evil. We can’t live without our natural rational mind but we also can’t let it run our lives when it comes to our inner being, our ‘God with us’ spiritual life of faith. We need another kind of mind with a higher order of knowing and understanding truth than just the natural rational mind.

Our renewed spiritual mind

When Paul wrote to the churches (ALL of them) he instructed the newly converted non-Jewish Christians about not being conformed to the rational natural mind of the world. This was a huge and fundamental change of thinking for these novel disciples that Paul saw was vital for them in the new Kingdom age of the life of God within us. (Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus) The heart of faith gets informed of spiritual truth by the spiritually renewed mind, and that renewed mind finds its home in the new heart that is part of God’s Promise to us (Ezekiel 36:26 a new heart I will give you). That new heart is the place where faith dwells.

Paul wrote to ALL the churches that were in his care about the spiritual renewing of the mind. He spoke to them about how to know God by faith and how to be known OF God by faith. But he also taught them how to see themselves as being part of the life of God. This was a revolution of thinking - and it still is!

When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church (1Corinthians 2:14) he was writing to people who had lived within their Greek philosophical and religious culture and had been steeped in all those customs and behaviours in their natural minds. He told them that their natural rational minds (psychikos – soulish mind) could not receive the things of the Spirit of God because those Spiritual things were irrational (m??ros; absurd) to them; and that they couldn’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned, and that only those who were spiritually minded (pnematikos) could discern those things.

Paul finished that topic about having a spiritual mindset by writing to the Corinthians that they could have the mind of Christ. This does not mean that we know the all the content of what Christ knows, but that we can think like Jesus thinks! And we can know what he reveals to our hearts by the Holy Spirit! Paul also wrote to the Philippian church and entreated them to have this mind in you which was also in Christ (Philippians 2:5).

When Paul writes to the Ephesian church (Ephesians 4:17-20) he tells them that they needed to think differently and to live differently from all the gentile unbelievers around them, who didn’t know the Ten Commandments and who had all kinds of ideas about what religion or morality was (similar to what we see around us today). He spoke about those unbelieving people as being ignorant of God and resistant in their hearts to God. They were alienated from the life of God because of an uninformed mindset of separation from God. He goes on to say to the church ‘But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught the truth concerning him as it is in Jesus. Paul had taught them of the gift of the life of Jesus within them that changes their old self life with its natural mindset and natural desires of the heart into a new self in Christ with a new mindset and with new Spiritual desires in the heart.

He says to them ‘put off your old self, which belongs to your former wayward way of life and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God. This is not just a different thing to think but it is also a different way to think.

This is actually what REPENTANCE is! But isn’t repentance about turning away from sin? Yes – but how do you do that? Do we simply tell people to make a resolution to use more will power and stop sinning? The word repentance (metanoia) means ‘A change of mind’ a 180 degrees turnaround! Only our renewed mind understands the Spiritual reality of a life of putting on the new self, created after the likeness of God. Our renewed spiritual mind informs our heart of that truth and that becomes believed upon in our new heart and that becomes a new way of living. That is the only way we can live above sin (1John 3:9). That is the repentance that leads to faith, and this is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, sent to convince the WORLD of sin, because of their unbelief.

This putting off the old self and being renewed in the spirit of the mind and putting on the new self is to be an everyday activity for us all! We move in and out of our natural rational mindset and have to re-engage with our renewed Spiritual mindset a lot of the time.

The best that a person could obtain in the Old Testament as far as a pure mind is concerned was to revere the Ten Commandments that God gave Israel. This is what David did, and he shares his love for God’s Commandments throughout the Psalms and speaks about how they restored his soul and enlightened his eyes (Psalm 19). And Psalm 119 contains 176 verses speaking about nothing else except David’s love of God’s Law. We see the effect of this upon David in that he was a person of faith and was called ‘A man after God’s own heart’.

But Paul was offering those gentile churches a Gospel of a totally new measure of truth and grace and faith through Jesus Christ that was above and beyond the Old Testament faith experience or comprehension. This was a New Word, with a New Voice, the Voice of Jesus.

Just one Voice

Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

The voice of God’s Son is better than the voice of the prophets. This was the motive of the epistle, the purpose of the letter, and the heart of the message of the Book of Hebrews. When Paul comes to the faith chapter (Ch.11), he shows us the faith of the patriarchs and prophets, from Abel, and Noah and Abraham through Moses and Gideon and David which were counted to them as faith – It was the faith for that time. Then Paul tells us that the faith of Jesus in comparison to those works and words was something far greater. He closes that faith chapter with the words, “God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” In other words, their excellent faith for those days was waiting to be completed by the new kind of faith imparted by God himself through Jesus to our hearts. And he begins the next chapter (12) by saying that Jesus is the author and finisher of OUR faith.

Looking to Jesus

We look to Jesus who is the Author and Finisher of our faith. In other words, all true faith now begins and ends in Him. Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author (archegos – primary bringer of) and finisher (telei??t??s –final goal achiever) of our faith…

When faith is needed, it will not be withheld. We can always be assured that Jesus is interceding for us to the Father for his will to be done in our lives.

Our faith comes from the heart of Jesus into our heart.

If someone tells me that they have received real faith for a situation I would sincerely assume that they received it from Jesus, and that they heard him (I don’t mean audibly). That is what Paul wrote; Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word (rhema – utterance) of God. (Romans 10:17)

But can’t we just read a Scripture and say we will receive it if we believe it and just claim it? To that kind of question Jesus said; John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. So our spiritually renewed mind can go to the Scriptures to receive truth about Jesus, but our heart needs to go to Jesus and wait for him to speak his truth to us. That way you read truth with your renewed mind, and you hear Jesus in your heart, and you will see his supernatural work on your behalf.

To believe in healing or any other supernatural work of God is one thing; but to have faith for it is altogether something else.

If you receive healing or any other supernatural work of God, it will be because of the impartation of His faith; it will be because Faith has flowed out of His heart into yours; and that is the only faith that brings about the work of God. And you can have it; for He does give it! Then you will know that your faith, your ‘shared with Jesus’ faith is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8).

The wonder of the gift of God lies in the fact that faith for any supernatural work of God is frequently imparted to us as a gift when we feel the least deserving of it. It is not always the product of our loyal ‘exercise of Godliness’ and our faithful waiting upon him, for God hears the cry of our human heart when we can’t even put a prayer together in our heads. God says he dwells in a high and holy place, and with the humble in spirit, to restore the spirit of the lowly and revive the aching heart (Isaiah 57:15)

And even when we are faithfully being ‘exercised in Godliness’ and seeking after God from our hearts we will not always feel that we’ve received faith from Jesus for some particular request. But we can always know that we do have Jesus! So our faith is never far away because Jesus is at work on our behalf in the world of the unseen. We can remember the words of our Lord, ‘Without me you can do nothing’ and be comforted that being ‘with him’ in our heart is certainly the best place to be.

Pray and ask anyway

When we bring a prayer request before God, be it for guidance or spiritual understanding or healing or any other spiritual or material need we can wait on God for the witness of the Spirit – for the faith OF Jesus. If we receive that then it is a gift from Jesus. In the meantime we have made our request with sincerity of heart and we surrender the request from our heart to God’s heart. That is the most and the best we can do. We then leave it in God’s hands and trust the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, who is the one who intercedes for us according to the will of God (Hebrews 7:25. Romans 8:27). Then that peace of God that surpasses all understanding can be ours. The following Scripture tells us that both our heart AND our mind is being guarded or protected from fear and anxiety through Jesus Christ Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

So how do I know I’m believing from the heart and not my natural mind?

When we are genuinely seeking to believe God and yet somehow realize we are still functioning in our natural minds we become more aware of the way our emotions get attached to our thoughts. The anxiety digs in and the doubts line up waiting for our attention and our sense of God’s peace seems to vaporize. That doesn’t have to be a problem as long as we become aware that we need to make the shift of bringing our mind into the heart. We recall to mind his love for us and cast our cares upon him. All things are possible to those that believe, but it is important to know how you believe.

The imperative from Jesus has always been ‘seek first the Kingdom of God’ That is why the emphasis is on the surrender of the natural to the spiritual and being aware of our human shortcomings as well as God’s gracious provision for us. Then we can know that Jesus will be to us all he has promised to be, first spiritually, and then physically and materially. This is the renewing of the mind, aligning our minds with the mind of Jesus who emptied himself from his ‘me-self’. The pathways of the mind into the heart are being formed each time we let go of one direction of the mind and move into the other, continually returning to ‘God with us” Amen!

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HEART AND SOUL  I am following on from the previous talk called ‘Saviour of all mankind’ regarding the spiritual exercise of the soul in moving from its expression of our natural spirit to our ‘God with us’ Spirit. I want to discuss a further aspect of the salvation of our soul today by considering the place where this soul and spirit activity takes place. That place is the heart. Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Let us do a brief recap of the function of the soul;

Our soul – our mind and our emotions and our will, process the inner senses of the spirit as well as the five outer senses of the body. The soul is the loudspeaker of what both our inner spiritual reality and our outer world reality is going through. It does all the oohs and ahs and groans and moans and hurrahs and hallelujahs. It laughs and cries and sulks and sighs. It is the public broadcast of our being – the person we think we are, (that could become much better as far as God’s idea of us is concerned). These expressions of our souls that contend with the expression of the souls of other people, can be quite intense but they are often more surface than real. Our soul is looking for something deeper in a safe place, a home where it can be rested and healed and made to settle. Where is that place where God invites us in to be where he is, where is that place where he knocks on the door to be where we are?

Again; That place is our heart. The heart is where our spirit is nested, and it is where God has always met with mankind (He has put eternity in their hearts - Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is where he reserved a space in the hearts of men and women to speak into from all tribes and Nations since the beginning of time. The Scriptures record his conversations with Adam and Abraham and Sarah and Rahab and Deborah and David and many others, including all the prophets up until John The Baptist. And then God came to us as Jesus, to live as one with him in the fullness of his heart. This was more than humanity just having a ‘God space’ in the heart for God to communicate into. This was the fulness of God’s own heart dwelling within the heart of humanity within the heart of his Son Jesus.   Colossians 2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; And the Bible tells us that from that time on that He dwells in our hearts by faith so that we may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God ( Ephesians 3:20) 

Our hearts were created to live in that relational atmosphere of closeness and belonging to God and we are invited in there by God himself. God, whose own heart expresses the fulness of this environment and invites us into it. What a miracle - That God can live in loving fullness in a human heart that has become a new heart, by faith.!

This new heart was what the prophet Ezekiel spoke about that God would give us at the appointed time (Ezekiel 36… a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you). It is fashioned after God’s own heart and it can begin to emerge through us into a world that needs the love and compassionate action that comes from the heart of ‘God with us’ though Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

How does this new heart take shape in us and live and become the announcement of our being, instead of the surface reactions and self-focussed demands of a restless soul? We start by giving attention to the nature of God’s heart of closeness and belonging that draws us into itself. This is where we were appointed to live.  So why do we tend to resist and separate off?  Unfortunately, other things get our attention. But if we start to appreciate and choose the highest spiritual goal of our life, to know and love God, and to be with Him forever, we will choose to not be distracted from that goal.  There is a story in Greek mythology of a footrace where one of the runners (Hippomenes) sets his heart fully on winning the race against a swift and well-trained female athlete (Atalanta). His trick to win the race was to throw a golden apple upon the ground from time to time, which distracted Atalanta who would stop running to pick up the golden apples and so lost the race. Hippomenes won the race, won Atalanta as a bride, plus a huge bunch of golden apples! Paul tells us that God has set the race of faith and endurance before and for us not to get hindered or distracted (Hebrews 12:2) We are not competing against anyone else except ourselves, and we can choose to run the race set before us and so win the eternal prize of ‘God with us’ life.

Running this race of faith properly comes through surrender and release. This is the real effort. We learn to ‘let go’ of the many unproductive distractions to the inner life of our soul, where the racing mind and its imaginations and our emotional unrest do not hijack our soul from achieving its goal of faith, which is the soul finding its place in the heart where we find that place of closeness and belonging with God. (1Peter 1:9).   

The mind

We cannot turn off our minds and go blank but we can redirect our minds to contemplating God’s idea of what he thinks is important about us and our situations, instead of debating with ourselves about our idea of what is important about life. We let go of following one train of thought and embrace another train of thought.

When we do this, we are bringing our mind into the heart. We align our minds with the mind of Jesus who emptied himself from ‘me-self’. This is a renewing of the mind, the saving of the soul-mind from its anxious and uptight fixation on the problems that invade our outer world of conflict and disorder. We can practice this exercise of shifting the focus from the outer world to the inner world of God’s heart, for short periods of time as we find opportunity. I call this the Pathway of Presence Prayer. 

The pathways of the soul into the heart are being formed each time we let go of one direction of the mind and move into the other.  We keep returning to ‘God with us”. We can then start solving our problems in our ‘God with us’ minds. This starts to become not so much about what we think but more about how we think. The attitude of surrender has brought the soul home to the heart where it finds God’s wisdom (James 1:5)

The emotions/feelings

The heart is also where we can choose to set our feelings and affections upon God and his love for us. Colossians 3:3 Set your affections (phroneo – sentiment or fervent opinion) on things above, not on things on the earth.

Just as our mind can be distracted by all those outer problems so our feelings and emotions can be side-tracked by focussing more upon the negative feelings we have of ourselves rather than the loving feelings that God has about us. We can get weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be receiving God’s love. Once we have come to this point we need to know we can enjoy having a clear conscience, not being weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be engaging with God in this way. This is where The Holy Spirit shows us the bigness of God’s loving heart towards us and he shows us how precious are his thoughts towards us we are in his sight (Psalm 139). He loves us just as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23) sees us as the finished product of our new heart self in Jesus, and his reality of who we are is greater than our own heart’s reality of who we are. 

John 3:19-20. For if our heart accuses us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. 22 And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

We can confess our own sinful nature and its weakness and fallibility and receive the love and mercy and greatness and goodness that is God’s great heart. As we appreciate more of the loving nature of God we begin to set our affections upon God and grow to love and trust him more and more. This is when he so often makes his presence known to us and we become aware of being ‘found in him’.  When we realise that our hearts are so small and judgmental even upon ourselves and that his heart is so big and accepting of us in his mercy and forgiveness, this is where we learn to ‘give thanks in all things because this is the will of God’ (1thessalonians 5:18).

It is difficult for our emotions to say ‘thank you God’ when we are going through an unpleasant circumstance because our emotions get stuck and we tend to resist what is happening.  What is really happening at that moment is not just the unpleasant circumstance – it is our unpleasant emotional reaction to it, like anxiety or impatience or frustration or even annoyance. This inner conflict is what is hard to live with more than the circumstance itself in the present moment, and this is where the bigness of God’s heart comes into the picture once more. So we confess honestly to a merciful and forgiving God the fact that we are stuck in those negative and hurtful emotional feelings. 

God is greater than our heart and lovingly accepts us in that human weakness and he then releases a healing grace of peace that lifts us out of our painful ‘me with me self’ of our reactions into our ‘God with me self’ freedom to be able to accept that circumstance. We begin to experience the closeness and belonging environment of the heart of God and we regain confidence that he is still supernaturally working all things together for good for us and we set our affection upon God and give him thanks. This is another opportunity of surrender of letting go.

The will Once we have begun to set our affections upon God, with the awareness of ‘being found in him’ we find that he begins to change the desires of our heart. Our will has become nestled in the embrace of God and we begin to live in the ‘not my will but your will be done’. We begin to ‘do those things that are pleasing in His sight’.

This is the letting go of one desire and taking hold of a new desire of the heart – a gift of God’s transforming grace – another act of surrender.

When God puts this new desire into our hearts we get a new perspective of who we really are in Christ because we are becoming a person after his own heart and that is where we know we belong.

There is a story about a cluster of acorns laying underneath a huge oak tree on a grassy slope in the shady sunshine. They were boasting to one another how fulfilled and satisfied they felt about themselves as a group, and how splendid and shiny they looked. Then a smaller drab looking acorn fell from a great height though the branches of the oak tree and landed in their midst. They scoffed at the sight of this newcomer and continued to discuss how splendid they thought themselves to be and then one of them asked the little acorn; ‘where did you come from?’ and ‘who on earth do you think you are? They didn’t think he really belonged.

The little acorn said humbly that he dropped from way up in the top of the tree and that as he was falling past the huge branches he heard a whisper from the great oak tree saying about him ‘he’s one of us’. The little acorn knew that would one day come to pass. He knew where he really belonged deep down, with other oak trees, not other pretentious acorns. Just as an acorn contains an oak tree so our new heart can contain God. The acorn lets go of remaining an acorn and sheds its outer shell and germinates as a seed to become an oak tree. We are found by God within and God is found by us within. God with us.  ‘Us in him and him in us’ (John 14:20). Our new heart functions authentically in the infinite greatness of God’s love.

I encourage you to stay with the thoughts that I have shared with you today to allow the inner shift of faith to occur, that the Scriptures hold out to us, and let the soul find its home in your heart. As the Apostle Peter said; 1Peter 1:8 You love him even though you have never seen him; and though not seeing him, you trust him; and even now you rejoice with the joy that comes from heaven itself, receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

So let us to do an exercise of Presence Prayer again in a moment for three minutes or so, and to meditate again upon some spiritual realities of God’s words to us from Scripture. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, (PSALM 19:14)

I am going to read some of the Scriptures I read the last time we sat in the presence of The Lord and add a few others that speak particularly of the heart. You may find that one of the following Scriptures speaks to you in a special way, and if so hold on to that one thought throughout the week and let that Word become flesh in you. So let us come into his presence now and be still and know that he is God.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

I am receiving from you Lord the salvation of my soul (1Peter 1:9). 

I am seeking first your Kingdom O Lord and knowing that you add all the other things that I need according to your will (Luke 12:31). 

You give me the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind (2Timothy 1:7)

I know that it is you that is working within me to will and to do that which pleases you (Philippians 2:13)

I am coming to you just as you asked me, to find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28). 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21)

I will be still and know that you are God.  I will be still and know that you are the Lord that heals me. (Psalm 46:10)

How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them (Psalm 139:17)

I know that your presence will go with me and you will give me rest for I have found grace in your sight and you know me by name. (Exodus 33:14)

I trust in you O Lord I say you are my God My times are in Your hands  My times are in Your hands (Psalm 31:14)

I Know that you doing exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think according to your power that is working within me. (Ephesians 3:20)

I know the thoughts that you have towards me, of good and not of evil, to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

I am confident that you Lord who has begun a good work in me will complete it until that day (Philippians 1:6)

Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38)

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SAVIOUR OF ALL MANKIND

We are continuing the discussion of the goal of our faith – the saving of our souls. The saving of our souls is a collaborative work between us and the Saviour of our souls.

1Timothy 4:7 train yourself for godliness; for if physical training has some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. For to this end we struggle and make an effort because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all Mankind, especially of those who believe. Saviour - g4990. ????? s??t??r; from 4982 sozo; saviour, rescuer, healer, protector.

I want to note especially that this saving work of the soul was achieved by Jesus for all of Mankind – everybody - That is the heart’s desire of a loving God for his creation, but it only becomes a present reality to those who have faith in that work of God through Jesus Christ. Paul compares the effort for spiritual fitness to training ourselves for physical fitness, and physical fitness is only effective if the discipline is regular and ongoing. The same goes for our training in spiritual fitness, or godliness. How do we train ourselves for godliness, the inner work of spiritual fitness? Paul tells us that we have to make an effort - an inner spiritual work of the soul – a labour of entering into the rest of faith, as our Saviour works supernaturally upon us and for us in all things. All of us have a natural human spirit that was created in the image of God before the foundation of the world, but when the Holy Spirit was poured out on humanity on the Day of Pentecost God’s Spirit was made available to be joined to our human spirit through our faith (God with us). The soul expresses both the natural human spirit, and our ‘God with us’ Spirit, and these are two different spiritual realities for us

Our human spirit reality is instinctively influenced by what is happening to us in the world around us and that stamps its identity of our idea of ourselves (who we think we are) upon our soul. Our God with us Spirit reality is influenced by what The Holy Spirit is doing to transform us and that stamps the identity of God’s idea of who we are upon our soul. It takes work and effort on the inner life of the soul to move from one reality to the other and that work includes what the Bible calls being renewed in the spirit of our mind (Romans 12:2).

The human spirit always has a sense of falling short – the have not, am not, know not, cannot and do not. These can seem irrational to our minds if we analyse them but the emotions and feelings are what they are and they are not always rational because our imagination can escalate the drama of any situation whether good or bad. . We often deal with this falling short am not, have not in our natural minds by deciding to put on a front or go into denial or blame a whole lot of circumstances or other peoples’ behaviour, but our self defence mechanisms and coping devices end up failing and wearing us out emotionally, and all kinds of harmful or destructive behaviour can result from these efforts.

God sees each one of us in our human spirit as his child created in his image. But those who believe the lifechanging truth, that God has caused our spirit to be joined in oneness to his Spirit are told in the Bible that they are being transformed into the image of Jesus by the Spirit of the Lord (2Corinthians 3). This only has meaning and power for those who believe in this truth and choose to live in it. Holy Spirit seeks to awaken us to a new Reality of who we are. On the one hand we need to have a grasp of how to honestly admit our own sinful nature and its weakness and fallibility. On the other hand we need to have a grasp of the nature of God’s forgiveness and love and mercy. God is bigger than our opinion of ourselves, and our opinion of God is always immeasurably deficient. As his Word and his Spirit informs our spirit more and more of the loving nature of God we grow to love and trust him more and more.

Our experience of the outer life and the inner life. The outer life is experienced as a series of events and happenings with the world. The inner life is experienced as a series of moments of connection with God.

The outer life Our outer life experiences dominate the attention of our natural mind which is the mind of our natural human spirit. The natural mindset in relationship to the outer life and the world goes down the pathway of wanting to ‘know the world’ and wanting to be ‘known by the world’ and this is where our mental and emotional energy is spent. That is the place where our sense of ‘I have not, I am not, I cannot, wants to ‘know the world’ and find answers of self-help and self-mastery. That is also the place where our need for belonging and feeling some measure of significance causes us to want to be ‘known by the world’ and find answers to these basic human needs. These are not wrong pursuits for the natural mind and emotions to have, because for most of the world that is the only kind of mindset that exists as a reality, and that is what has brought us all individually and collectively to the place of whatever measure of material attainment and success we have all reached at this time in history - and this is where our natural and emotional energy has mostly been spent and where we call upon the reserves of our acquired skills and learning and God given gifts. However, this natural mindset has also brought us to whatever measure of evil and disorder that also exists at this time in history – our failure to live in love and be at peace with one another, and this is where our natural and emotional energy has mostly been spent.

The inner life The inner life is experienced as a series of moments of connection with God. Connecting with God is not just the mental knowledge of the fact that God exists remotely in the universe and if you try hard enough you might get his attention. He is there within you wanting to get your attention. As far as you and he are concerned you are his only concern - his concern is your inner life, your inner world, and we need to learn that we can give any given moment of time to that reality, no matter what else is going on. Otherwise Jesus is not your Saviour but a concept of someone you can read about in the Bible who did wonderful things on the earth two thousand years ago. Your present reality is that he is actively at work in the world of the unseen on your behalf concerning every detail of your life. You are his creation and have been brought into oneness with him, which is a reality for us only if we believe it, even though God’s oneness with us is his objective for humanity – ‘the Saviour of all mankind, especially of those who believe’(1Timothy 4:7)

The spiritual ‘God with us’ mind goes down the pathway of wanting to know God and be known by him (Galatians 4:9). Knowing him is more than just having information about him. It is experiencing the warmth and friendship of Jesus in his humanity and his divinity. The Bible tells us that those who love God are known by him because knowing and being known is a two-way self-disclosure between one person and another. We give ourselves to him by sharing everything about ourselves with him and he gives himself to us not only by revealing to us what his Word says about him but also by the whisper of the Holy Spirit who reveals who Jesus is to us in any given situation. We focus upon that and connect with God in that moment.

We’re talking about going down this pathway of connecting with God, but this pathway has to be formed first, for us to be able to get on it quickly and freely, in any circumstance or situation, and this takes practice – it takes spiritual work, the exercise of godliness. This becomes what we give our time and energy to. So where is our mind at any one stretch of time? Is it stuck on ‘‘am not - have not - cannot - will not? If we can focus on ‘God with us’ and his goodwill towards us in the events and happenings of life, those things of the world assume their rightful place in the big scheme of our lives, and that captive moment of oneness with him turns into a moment of faith, where I am assured that God is at work for me in that situation and that, in turn brings rest and peace and blessing. That is the ‘when I’m weak I’m strong’ exchange in real time, and at so little cost. New pathways of faith and hope get laid down and get formed more permanently in our minds every time we do this exercise of godliness, and more space is created in our hearts to contain his loving presence and rest.

So we need to establish these pathways of faith and hope by setting aside quality abiding time with God, as Jesus did when the Bible speaks of him retiring to be away from others and to be with his Father on a mountain top, a metaphor of putting our minds upon things above and not on the things of this earth. I call these structured times of collaborative work with God ‘Presence Prayer’. The practice of presence prayer establishes these pathways of faith and hope. Our work is the being still and holding on to him in our minds and hearts - a work of receiving – the labouring to enter into the rest of the soul. We focus upon God’s spiritual reality that he is supernaturally at work in the world of the unseen on our behalf concerning every detail of our inner life – his Spirit changing us into his likeness and opening our eyes to his miraculous ordering of all things in our life, and becoming our peace and hope and consolation. We practice focussing upon this instead of focussing on our human spirit ‘have not’ reality concerning all of our problems. We can do this often and for extended periods of time just as Jesus did. It is something we can do when we choose to. I would like us to do an exercise of Presence Prayer now for a couple of minutes, and to meditate upon some spiritual realities of God’s words to us from Scripture, as David said; PSALM 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, So just sit quietly and meditate upon these words of encouragement from the Lord.

Meditations

I am receiving from you Lord the salvation of my soul (1Peter 1:9).

I am seeking first your Kingdom O Lord and knowing that you add all the other things that I need according to your will (Luke 12:31).

You give me the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind (2Timothy 1:7)

I know that it is you that is working within me to will and to do that which pleases you (Philippians 2:13)

I am coming to you just as you asked me, to find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28).

I will be still and know that you are God. I will be still and know that you are the Lord that heals me. (Psalm 46:10)

I give you thanks Lord, with a grateful heart.

How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them (Psalm 139:17)

I know that your presence will go with me and you will give me rest for I have found grace in your sight and you know me by name. (Exodus 33:14)

I trust in you O Lord I say you are my God My times are in Your hands My times are in Your hands (Psalm 31:14)

I Know that you are doing exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think according to your power that is working within me. (Ephesians 3:20)

As you said Jesus; I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I determine; and My judgment is right, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30)

I know the thoughts that you have towards me, of good and not of evil, to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

I am confident that you Lord who has begun a good work in me will complete it until that day (Philippians 1:6)

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SALVATION OF THE SOUL

We will be looking at the meaning of these two words today – Soul and Salvation.

The Bible tells us that as human beings we have a body and a soul and a spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23 may your spirit and soul and body be kept strong and blameless …

Our soul sits between our spirit and our body. It receives information from our spirit through our conscience and intuition which informs our soul about what is happening in our inner world. The soul also receives information from our body’s five senses which informs it about what is happening in our outer world.

The soul processes each of these areas of information through its three modes of activity, which are the mind, the emotions and the will.

The mind receives information and orders it according to what it ranks as being of value to our life.

The emotions/feelings react or respond to information as to whether it is helpful or harmful

The will finally decides how to act upon the information when it has evaluated what the mind has considered, and how the emotions and feelings move it one way or the other.

Our area of focus today concerning the salvation of the soul is about how our soul responds to the inner world of our life in the spirit.

And this is where the soul actually relates to the two different worlds of our inner spiritual life and they are a) the natural human spirit and b) the human spirit that is joined by faith to God’s Spirit.

All of us have a human spirit that was created in the image of God before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) and that is the reality of the inner world of humanity since Adam. It is perhaps the most vulnerable part of our being and is open to being wounded and isolated and feeling deprived. It can see itself in a place of ‘not having’ even when it is in a place of relative plenty. It yearns for fulfillment, and God know this, and so does the devil.

When the Holy Spirit was poured out on humanity on the Day of Pentecost God’s Spirit was made available to be joined to our human spirit. Our faith brings into being our new inner world reality of ‘God with us’ (Acts 2:16).

This soul of ours is the critical measure of who we will come to be during this life of ours, the person that will give an account of itself on the day of judgement before God. It will either struggle through life following its own choices as to how to have the needs and demands of its own vulnerable human spirit met, perhaps doing its best to take on this world and being overcome by its chaos and disorder.

Or this soul of ours will be found of God and transformed and have its mind reordered and renewed, its emotions healed and restored, and it’s will subdued into harmony with God by The Holy Spirit. This will be what we can really call Salvation.

As afflictions and burdens weary the mind and body, and the soul follows a weakening will, looking for rest, God waits to heal and to save the soul – come to me all you who burdened and heavy laden… and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28).

When the Apostle Peter writes to the Christians he tells them what the Good News is all about, the Gospel of the Salvation of our lives. He speaks about the faith and grace that has come to us that was not available to God’s people in the Old Testament. He tells them that the prophets told God’s people that something wonderful was coming one day but that even the prophets who proclaimed it did not understand when and how it would happen. He was talking about the Salvation of our souls.

1Peter 1:8 Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with inexpressible joy, receiving the goal of your faith - the salvation of your souls. 19 This salvation was something the prophets did not fully understand and even though they wrote about this grace that would come to you; they had many questions as to what it all could mean… these things have now been revealed to you by the preaching of this good news through the Holy Spirit, things which angels also long to look into.

What did the prophets say? Let us look at what Isaiah said – He talks about the pain and suffering and grief that Jesus went through when he overcame the world of chaos and disorder that he was born into. He tells us what this suffering saviour would do for humanity. He would heal the inner life of humanity by restoring our peace, carrying our griefs and sorrows and forgiving our sins.

Isaiah 53.4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes (wounds) we are healed (made whole – strengthened).

And then further on in the next chapter Peter actually repeats what Isaiah the prophet said.

1Peter 2:24 He himself carried our sins our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his stripes (wounds) you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and carer of your souls

What is being healed here?

Guilt, shame, feeling lost and uncared for - Our soul – the inner life.

This gives new meaning to the phrase ‘saving the lost’.

Healing for the body is a different matter. Physical healing is always a separate act of grace and faith in us and it occurs by the sovereign will of God.

1Corinthians 12:9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles… All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one accordingly (‘kathos’ as to how and when) as he wills (boulomai – to intend, be disposed). This means that healing of the body is always a sovereign act of God, even though in his sovereignty he allows us to be partners with him in these acts of grace by our faith. This is so that we can be used of God to bring healing to others. (We can obviously acknowledge that God also heals people with such sovereignty that they are healed without any human participation at all).

These gifts can be operated by all believers and there are some who have been notable in the use of these Holy Spirit anointings, but it is clear that the supernatural act of grace is always at the disposal of the will of The Holy Spirit. This means that these gifts operate with the same surrendered heart of submission that Jesus had, just as he said;

John 5:30 I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I determine; and My judgment is right, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.

The word ‘Salvation’

The original Greek Scriptures were written in pure colloquial Greek but our English Bible developed very differently and was not presented in simple colloquial English when it at last began to be read by Christians at around the time of the reformation. Many of the important doctrinal terms were words adopted from Latin that was adopted from Greek and then translated back into difficult English along the way and then into the cherished poetic prose of The Kings James Bible.

So we had pure Greek with the Church Fathers (Athanasius, Irenaeus), through till 380 AD which was translated into Latin by St. Jerome for 1000 years which dominated most of Christendom right up to the Reformation in 1517AD.

Along the way there was an awkward Anglo Saxon version (680-900 AD) then the English Wycliff translation (1380 AD) then the English Tyndale version (1526), and Tyndale was the first one to use the word Salvation in the English Scriptures and he used it only once, in John 4:22 … for salvation commeth of the Jewes…

For a thousand years the Latin Jerome version used the Latin word ‘salut’ which meant ‘health’ (as in drinking a toast – good health! - Salut). This word salut became the word

that we would eventually read as Salvation in our English King James vesion

The original Greek word we now call Salvation is sozo which had the meaning of being healed and to be made safe and made whole.

After the fine robust old English word ‘health’ dropped out and was displaced by an imported and now most important Latin word, ‘Salvation’, that the whole world of Christianity could at last read, that word came to mostly mean going to Heaven for any struggling human being of good conscience.

It was meant to be a present experience of the spiritual reality of the healing and wholeness of a New Creation life that comes from the forgiveness of sin and the joining of God’s Spirit to ours through the Holy Spirit (as well as going to Heaven!)

The problem is – What does it mean? The Greek is much clearer and simpler.

The Salvation (saving, restoration and healing) of the Soul

We saw in the Scripture of Isaiah about Jesus suffering and being wounded for our healing, and we saw how Peter repeated that Scripture in the New Testament concerning the saving of our souls. So how is this good news healing and saving experienced by us in our everyday lives? How do we live it out.

Our souls are constantly being buffeted by the adversities and the contradictions of life generally, and these experiences cause us emotional suffering and feelings of grief and loss that can overwhelm us and rob us of our peace and take away our hope. The constant bombardment of bad news that circulates in today’s global community can affect our souls massively. this has become a kind of negative consciousness that hangs over everybody.

Where can people find that sense of certainty and confidence and hope?

It comes by our growing in faith, trusting that a merciful God is with us and inspiring us by his Spirit to live out that godly (healed and saved) life. When Paul writes to the Philippians he urges them to take this healed and saved life seriously as an awesome responsibility. He tells them to … ‘live out your salvation (sozo) with awesome fear and respect, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do what his good will desires for you. (Philippians 2:12)

Our will can be healed and saved as he puts his desires in our hearts and transform our wilfulness into willingness.

Our mind can be renewed and re-ordered by receiving not just knowledge about God but receiving spiritual truth from God by the Holy Spirit who is joined to our spirit.

Our emotions can be healed (saved) as God’s love comforts and encourages our hearts of faith, which is then able to express the love and peace and joy of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 14:17 For the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

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How do the next six commandments from Commandment Five to Commandment Ten differ in nature from the first four commandments?

These next six commandments differ from the first four because there is a new framework of relationships. The first four commandments dealt with our relationship to God and the next six deal with our relationships to one another. The relational scope of the Ten Commandments is for us to live in harmony with God AND at peace with other people.

The Fifth commandment tells children to obey their parents. This only seems to be written to children – or is there another way to apply this to us all as adults?

The fifth commandment ALSO teaches us how to understand and respect the nature of authority itself, as it brings order into our lives at many levels. God ordains authority to be instrumental as the ordering of our relational reality. In thus Commandment we see how life now becomes a series of lessons divinely designed starting with this commandment and through the following commandments to transform our hearts relationally till we learn to live in harmony and order with other people.

What are some other areas of responding to authority as we grow up?

After experiencing parental authority there is school life, and that is mentioned in the Bible. (Galatians 4:2)

Then a young adult comes under the authority of his employer in the work place (Colossians 3:22-4:1).

Then we all come under the authority of the State (Romans Ch.13).

There is also the authority structure of the Church (Hebrews 13:17).

NB. All of the above authority structures operate under a two way agreement between those in authority and those under authority – AND – All authority is under God Who also operates under a two way agreement with us through His Covenants.

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GIDEON GETTING FAITH

Hebrews 11:32 And what more do I need to say? It would take a long time for me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, ruled the people well, obtained promises, kept from harm in dens of lions, and in a furnace of fire, escaped death by the sword, and out of weakness were made strong

‘Out of weakness and being made strong’ was how Gideon learned how to respond to God in faith. He thought ‘I’m not worthy so God would not bother with me’. He had to learn and to understand the partnership arrangement that God desired to have with him. This message of Gideon getting faith is also God’s message to each one of us, where life and power can be released into any situation through our faith partnership with Jesus, which is simply trusting that God is at work for good in the situation. We learn to focus upon the fact that God invites us into that partnership with him.

Gideon’s response to God’s invitation. Judges 6:11 Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress Not where wheat was usually threshed!, in order to hide it from the Midianites (which were an oppressive nation that God had used to punish Israel for seven years because of their continual disobedience). And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

There is a lot of ‘O, if, but, why, where,’ in there. That is because Gideon had a very low estimation of himself and he also underestimates God’s desire to have us work with him. God has to remind Gideon that salvation is his idea and that he will accomplish what he sets out to do and we will have the privilege to be part of what he is doing. So God overrides the ‘O, if, but, why, where,’ and tells him to get on with it.

Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”

Gideon makes one more attempt to wriggle out of the assignment and explains his lack of status and qualifications to God and outlines his CV that identifies him as unemployable.

Judges 6:15 So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.”

But God shuts down Gideon’s resistance by assuring Gideon that all he needs to know is that God will be with him and that the project will succeed. And the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

Then Gideon does certain sacrificial offerings as directed by the Angel of The Lord. Judges 6:24 And Gideon built an altar there and named it ‘The Altar of Peace with Jehovah’ (peace speaks of oneness with God) and he burned down the altars of Baal (burning the idols was the signal to all of Israel about trusting only in God). Vs.33 Soon afterward the armies of Midian, Amalek, and other neighboring nations united in one vast alliance against Israel. They crossed the Jordan and camped in the valley of Jezreel. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet as a call to arms, and the men of Abiezer came to him. He also sent messengers throughout Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, summoning their fighting forces, and all these tribes responded.

So Gideon has amassed a vast army of 32,000 men and The Lord said ‘Sorry Gideon, that’s too many’.

Judges 7:3 If you win, Israel will boast that it was because of their massive army – so tell any of them that are scared to go back home, and 22,000 went home, and there were 10,000 left. But the Lord told Gideon, ‘There are still too many! Bring them down to the spring and I'll show you which ones shall go with you and which ones shall not.’ So Gideon assembled them at the water. There the Lord told him, ‘Divide them into two groups decided by the way they drink. In Group 1 will be all the men who cup the water in their hands to get it to their mouths and lap it up. In Group 2 will be those who kneel, with their mouths in the stream.’ Only three hundred of the men drank from their cupped hands; all the others drank with their mouths to the stream. So God said ‘I'll conquer the Midianites with these three hundred! Send all the others home!’

God then instructed Gideon to take his servant down into the vast valley and creep into the enemy camp where many thousands of them had swarmed within the entire countryside like the sand upon the seashore, and the camels were too many to count. When they got close enough they heard one soldier telling his friend that he had had a dream that they would all be defeated by Gideon and massacred.

Judges 7:24 When Gideon heard the man talking about the dream all he could do was just stand there worshiping God! Then he returned to his men and shouted," Get up! For the Lord is going to use you to conquer all the vast armies of Midian!" He divided the three hundred men into three groups and gave each man a trumpet and a clay jar with a torch in it. Then he explained his plan. ’When we arrive at the outer guardposts of the camp (on high ground) do just as I do. As soon as I and the men in my group blow our trumpets, you blow yours on all sides of the camp and shout, ‘We fight for God and for Gideon!' Suddenly they blew their trumpets and broke their clay jars so that their torches blazed into the night. Then the other two hundred of his men did the same, blowing the trumpets in their right hands, and holding the flaming torches in their left hands, all shouting, "For the Lord and for Gideon!" Then they just stood and watched as the whole vast enemy army began rushing around in a panic, shouting and running away. For in the confusion the Lord caused the enemy troops to begin fighting and killing each other from one end of the camp to the other, and they fled into the night to places far far away…

It is amazing to see the intervention of God as he works in partnership with Gideon. He is told to do some simple things that whittle down Gideon’s chances of seeing the victory as anything else but God’s strategic wisdom and God’s supernatural power. He will do the same with us as we accept that God wishes to break through our everyday routine lives and manifest the riches of his wisdom and power through us. We are not going to be told to do anything as mad as what Gideon had to do but we can expect God to put us into everyday situations where God puts it into our hearts to do simple and often little surprising things that express his heart of love and peace and blessing, and his wisdom will be seen to act. Those promptings are signs of the intervention of Jesus in his vision for our lives of partnership and friendship with him.

The amazing interventions of God for Gideon were made for the express purpose of showing Gideon that the work was of God and not of him. We saw this with the peace offering he had to offer on the altar, which spoke of his oneness with God, and burning the idols - the signal for all Israel about trusting only in God. That was the starting point. All the other signs were framed within situations where the conditions were turned from one extreme to the other, to show Gideon that it was not in his strength but in God’s; He went from 32,000 troops to 300; the battle became one of the enemy fighting against one another instead of fighting against Israel; the reason for the confusion of the enemy was that one man had a dream that Gideon’s army would annihilate them and they had better flee, and his panic threw panic into all of them - and that was all God’s work, not some smart strategic negotiation from General Gideon, who blew a trumpet and ran down a hill with 300 men all shouting and carrying vessels full of fire that they smashed to pieces as they ran.

All of these signs were tests of faith set up for Gideon by God. However there was one test that was set up by Gideon for God, very early in the story; and that was the riddle of the sign of the fleece. This happened before he sent out the messages to gather all the tribes of Israel together. It was when God said that Gideon would have an army that would defeat the Midianites as one man. Judges 6:36 So Gideon said to God, “If You will save Israel by my hand as You have said— look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that You will save Israel by my hand, as You have said.” And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground.

This test was also framed within a situation where the conditions were turned from one extreme to the other; the fleece had to be either wet or dry according to Gideon’s request. The Bible makes no comment about why this was the request or even about what Gideon thought or said afterwards, or what God said. It just happened - and Gideon got faith – God’ s faith.

In simple terms, a fleece of wool can only exist if a lamb has been slain/sacrificed. This is prophetic for us of Jesus, who gives us HIS faith for every situation Galatians 2:20 … the life I now live, I live by the faith OF the Son of God…. No matter what the extremes are of our circumstances, or how little faith we have that things will work out for good, the reality of our faith is our trust in the faith of Jesus who asks the Father on our behalf for his good will to be done.

The fleece was going to be there for Gideon no matter how implausible the test was for God to show that he was there for him. Jesus was going to turn up for Gideon – wet or dry - and he will turn up for us OUR FAITH, in a way that assures us by his Spirit that it is really him who is doing the supernatural for us and through us as his vessel.

2Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us…

When this rest of faith has been entered into and we know that the power of God is at work it becomes clear that it is not about our estimation of ourselves anymore (in our weakness he becomes our strength). When we activate this kind of faith we will be in partnership with God, being guided along the way forward by the Holy Spirit and not by our own drivenness, and being prompted by him about what to do. Our battle is against our unbelief that God is with us in everything that is happening and even if we do not understand why it is happening we trust that God is bringing about the best for us right now – it is a present moment experience.

As earthen vessels we battle against; The unbelief that there is an excellence of power within us. Not understanding why what is happening to us is happening. Trusting that God is bringing about the best for us right now.

When we know by faith that the earthen vessel and the treasure always act together; It is no longer about our wrong estimation of ourselves as an empty earthen vessel. It is about God being with us in everything that is happening. It is about God bringing about the best for us in the situation right now.

Thank you Lord for being our faith, and our strength in our weakness. Amen

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WHY GOD AND HOW LONG LORD? (Questions from Habakkuk to God) Whether we are discussing events in the Old Testament or in the early New Testament church there were two certain questions for which it was hard for people to get an answer to from God, and it is the same in our present-day situation. Those two questions - WHY has God done something (or not done something) and asking God WHEN he is going to do something. The answer we usually get from God is WAIT – AND YOU WILL SEE!

In due course God will let us know why the timing was the way it was and why you had to wait, and why he allowed things to happen. But there is one thing that you can know for certain – and that is that God IS at work in the situation and that we must never give up trusting him to bring about his will for us. No matter what the situation happens to be, God is telling us to live by faith, trusting him totally. We can’t trust God totally and be anxious at the same time. He wants us to bring our anxieties and doubts to him but at some point we have to be able to laugh at our own anxiety.

What God wants us to get is a greater revelation of who he is, not just a better explanation from him of what he is doing (show me the science please Lord – the formula - so that I can be confident about pulling this off myself when I need to). No, he always gives us what he wants us to know, not always what we want to know. We get a new view of God and we grow in faith and trust – but we learn to hang in there and endure and be patient and have a living hope. On the journey of patience he shows us his goodness and what he is doing by the many little things that happen - the odd happenstances. He guides us with his eye. He then doesn’t have to drag us along like a horse or a mule (Psalm 32:8).

There is the story in the Old Testament of a man called Habakkuk. Everything seemed to be going wrong and the prophet thought that God had forgotten them. They had been terrified by the cruel oppression of the Assyrians and come through with God but now he could see that Babylon who had defeated the Assyrians were now going to come and attack them… He still believed in God but the circumstances caused doubts to come into his mind. Habakkuk was writing just before the rise of Babylon (Chaldea) and God was using Babylon to discipline and correct Judah. The big question of Habakkuk is, why does God use a wicked nation such as Babylon for his divine purpose? And how long till Babylon is judged. He could not understand all the strife and injustice that was happening in the nations round about him, nor could he understand the way God’s own people had become unfaithful in breaking God’s laws. This is very much what we see happening around us today. What happened to Israel is always a message for the Church and always a personal message for us Habakkuk 1:1 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; and justice is perverted. He wanted a move of God but he was told by God that God’s plan of action would be revealed at an appointed time and ‘It would surely come and it would not be late’ Habakkuk comes to realize that though God’s ways are sometimes hidden, his people shall live by his faith as they wait. These words are quoted three times in the New Testament (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38).

Habakkuk 2:3 ‘the revelation is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not be late… For the just shall live by faith.

God understood that Habakkuk had doubts and God was waiting for Habakkuk to ask some tough questions. God always wants us to go to him when we have doubts, and he knows we will have them. He lets us know that he is at work in the situation in his way and he asks us to wait and have faith in him. God answers tough questions with direct answers.

When Paul wrote to the Hebrew Christians they were having the same problem – they were doubting whether God was going to rescue them from the persecution from the Romans (and Jews) that was going on in Jerusalem at the time. This was written just a little while before The Roman armies destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, which was prophesied of by Jesus [Matthew 24:1-3] and which was fulfilled in 70AD. (Why Lord? how long Lord?). Many of the Hebrew Christians wanted to give up but Paul quoted the same Scripture that God gave to Habakkuk – ‘Don’t give up, just wait!’ Hebrews 10:32 remember when you were first enlightened by God and you went through persecution and affliction and insults and stayed the distance. Some of your friends even went to prison (some at the hands of Paul himself) and you had compassion for them, then your possessions were plundered but you knew that you had a far more precious and abiding possession on the inside than all of that. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my upright and faithful one shall live by faith, but if he shrinks back, I will feel disappointed in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are rendered useless (go to waste - ap??leia), but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. This is exactly what God had said to Habakkuk. Our discouragement will always say ‘Will God come and help, and when?’ The answer of faith will always be ‘Yes, wait for him and trust in him’ The very next verse in Hebrews is the beginning of a new chapter (11) which says that ‘faith is the basis of our hope, the assurance that God is at work on our behalf in the world of the unseen (the evidence of things – pragma – not seen).

For us personally in whatever are our present-day circumstances the answer to how long means that Jesus will arrive in time to reveal to us that he is there NOW and that he has a plan of action. Our faith is not confidence in what we can do, but confidence in what Jesus IS doing. Be still and know that he is God – IN ACTION! (Ezekiel 37:3 the switch from the natural to the supernatural)

He wants us to have an opportunity to get to know him in a greater way through this warm and familiar experience of hope and faith and to learn that we can share our hearts and minds with him in any situation. We can be assured that he hears us and brings about the will and purpose of The Father into our lives.

Habakkuk finally gave glory to God by accepting the fact that it was not about how he could deduce or determine the solution about what he saw going on around him, but it was the fact that he believed that God was at work in a great way – and he said ‘I am going to laugh AND sing about this’. He finishes his message with a great statement of faith. Habakkuk 3:17 Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor there be no fruit on the vines; Though the labor of the olive fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls—Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD my God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills. His message has the following footnote: A note to the Chief Musician. ‘’Accompany with stringed instruments.”

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JESUS OUR FRIEND IN FAITH

In Psalm 22 as Jesus was suffering and dying for us on the cross he cried out to his Father and said; Psalm 22:22 I will praise you to all my brothers and sisters; I will stand up before the assembly (the gathering of my friends) and testify of the wonderful things you have done… Let all Israel sing his praises, for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came."

in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews he quotes these words of Jesus to encourage them to not give up because they are going though times of affliction. Heb.2: 12 [Jesus is saying] ‘I'll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I'll join them in worship and praise to you. Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says, Even I live by placing my trust in God’. And he goes on to say, I'm here with the children God gave me’. 14. Since we, God's children, are human beings--made of flesh and blood--he became flesh and blood too by being born in human form; for only as a human being could he die for our sakes. (so that we could raised with him-Ephesians 2:6) 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham

That means that Jesus stands in the place for all humanity towards the Father and he stands in the place of the Father towards all humanity. He has made us one with him as a brother and as a friend in faith. Jesus is not only the heavenly example to us but a partner with us in a walk of faith – in the way that he trusted totally in the love of his Father to guide him through his life on earth. Jesus is saying that he is one with his earthly friends, his brothers and sisters, and that when they go through their afflictions and trials of faith he will give them his faith to go through their sufferings. In other words we can receive now the very faith that he has always had in the Father. Jesus call us his friends (John 15:15 – for all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you)

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not bring to naught the grace of God…otherwise Christ died in vain. Tineke and I lived in the Philippines for about eight months many years ago setting in the Filipino leadership in a church that we had been involved in helping to get established established at the time. At the end of one meeting where I’d been talking about faith, a lady asked me to pray for her concerning the shared ownership of their extended family of a small community store, called a sari sari store. There were many opinions as to who owned how much of the store. When I heard her prayer list, of how she felt God needed to give favour to some of the family, and to deal with some of the others to teach them a lesson, I thought it would need a Philadelphia lawyer to deal with the complexity of it all. She said she didn’t have enough faith to pray and that she had told her friends she would use Pastor Paul’s faith. This hadn’t been my plan when I had just taught about having faith but I was quite agreeable about praying and I found myself praying that she would be set free from anxiety and resentment about the situation and find the kind of wisdom spoken about in James re making peace and using entreaty and not starting a family feud etc. I felt that The Holy Spirit was with us and she was in agreement and surrendered it all into God’s hands and the Amen was real. That was just a shadow of what I came to understand about having the faith OF our friend Jesus not just faith IN Jesus.

Our prayers depend on the faith OF Jesus – that is our ultimate act of faith IN him. Romans 8:25 For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts (Jesus) knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because HE (Jesus) intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (verse 34…it is Jesus who is interceding for us). Paul knew the Hebrew Christians were fading in faith so Paul is fervently keen for them, and for all of us, to realize how Jesus desires to impart his own faith to us and bring our needs before his Father on our behalf as we go through the trials and testing of our faith. Then Paul tells them that we are not to think of our life as one that is doomed to affliction but rather as one that is destined for faith.

After Paul tells us about the heavenly example and heavenly participation of Jesus, he tells us about the earthly example and model of Abraham’s struggle of faith, in Abraham’s awkward attempts to develop that complete trust in a loving Father God.

Verse 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham

Paul honours Abraham as the ‘father of faith’ (Galatians 3:7) Abraham was also called the friend of God because of his faith (James 2:23) Jesus and Abraham as ‘friends in faith’ have much in common concerning their faith life, in that they both had to leave their world behind and enter a new one, they learned to trust God totally in times of uncertainty, and they understood ‘resurrection reality’. We also have these same challenges in our lives as friend of faith.

Abraham is called by God to leave the place where he grew up and leave his family behind, taking only his wife Sarah into a new and unknown land, where he was promised he would have many descendants and be the father of a great nation. He gets the order half-right - he takes his father and his cousin Lot with him too. This was to cause him trouble on his journey.

We are reminded by this that we who have responded to God to follow Him, can find ourselves still clinging to things 'back there'. We have to leave the old world of thinking that we can control things in life to have them work the way we want them to. We also cling to trusting in the things of the world that have given us some sense of certainty for our safety and security and satisfaction. Abraham faced many uncertainties and made mistakes of judgment but he learned to trust in God through them all. He told half truths

The hardest challenges are the uncertainties of life. Before Abraham left he was promised a son and many descendants, but he had to wait because despite God’s promise Sarah did not have a child, so Abraham acted impatiently by having a child through Hagar, his wife’s servant girl. However this did not stop the promised of a son from arriving in due time. It meant Abraham had to bear the consequences of his impatience but he had God as a friend (James 2:23… Abraham was called a friend of God) and we have Jesus as a friend.

A miracle happens. God has not forgotten His promise to Abraham. Sarah, in old age gives birth to a son, Isaac. But this is not the end of Abraham's journey. God tells him to sacrifice his only real God given son on an altar on a mountain. This time his obedience is complete. He puts Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, trusting God that He would either provide another sacrifice, or raise Isaac from the dead. This is called 'resurrection faith'. 'Resurrection faith' is surrendered faith whereby we place our faith in the hands of the faith of Jesus, who brings forth the will of the Father in our lives... God intervened for Abraham and provided a ram for the sacrifice and tells Abraham He has spared his son. The Father has provided Jesus for us – our resurrection faith. This was Abraham’s pinnacle of faith, but what a journey! This is the place where God wants to get us, where He wants to get His Church. Jesus left his heavenly world and became one of us. Then he took us back with him into his heavenly world when he rose from the dead and we stay with him, on earth but living from heaven (resurrection faith).

This is where resurrection life flows out of our sacrifice of surrender to God. This where the Church lives in the arena of the miraculous. We may have had some false starts like Abraham, we may have an Ishmael or two, where we’ve tried to do God's thing in our own way.

But God has us on His journey and He will provide supernaturally the completion of our faith. We can live in His resurrection life, partners and friends with Jesus. Resurrection faith is at the meeting point, where we leave our old world behind and enter into the world that Jesus has prepared for us. That is when we experience the supernatural walk with Jesus that he wants us to have, sharing in his very own faith. This is where there is answered prayer and that is where there is love and hope and faith (1 John 3:19-21).

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THE HIDDEN SEED OF LOGOS

1Peter 1:23 since you have been born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible seed, through the living and abiding (logos) of God;

Our New Creation lives are the expression of the logos seed of life implanted within us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the logos Word of God. God is always ‘bringing us into being’ of that New Creation life and our faith causes us to always be ‘coming into being’ of that life. We attend to that hidden seed of spiritual life within.

LOGOS THE BIG IDEA The Logos was the Word that spoke creation into being, and that designed and ordered everything in the Universe. John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him.

As a Pharisee, Paul used to have what he thought was the best and biggest idea for his life living under God’s Law, but then he was walloped by the greatest idea that had ever existed – the Logos, in the form of Jesus, The Word. Before Paul received a revelation from Jesus on the road to Damascus he was an enemy of Christianity. He had a very stable and strongly approved religion where everybody in his entire personal world validated him. When he was converted he was perceived as an enemy of Judaism by those of the Jewish religion even though they were not seen as enemies by him, and his whole personal world turned upside down.

Paul met the logos, Jesus, born from above, who joined God to humanity for all time. John 1:1 And the Word became flesh and lived amongst us. Jesus Christ, the Logos now sustains and upholds all of creation with that Word of power. (Hebrews 1:3). It is hard to grasp the wonder of this magnificent creative power that is able to order and reorder our whole life as we consciously cooperate with God in that process of transformation. Jesus the Logos Word unfolds to us who God is through the Holy Spirit, and as we get to know who God is, he gets to show us who we are.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD LOGOS The Word Logos had been around in Greek culture and philosophy for hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Logos was the one overarching thought in ancient Greek philosophy that expressed the wonder and design of an ordered Universe. When John wrote that Jesus was the Logos that created the world as God and that he became a human being that had come to live among us, it gave to everyone who read those words with a responsive faith, a profound understanding of who Jesus really was, as God joining himself to his own creation in us.

It was the Greek belief that Logos is some form of intentional idea or principle that can be seen everywhere; it makes up the earth, trees and even us as humans, and logos does not just give everything form; it also gives it order. In the Greek mind, this meant that logos determines who is who and who is placed where, because logos contains the master plan for all things, and constitutes the ideal way to order them.

So as Logos had become the big Idea for the Greek culture and indeed for much of the then known world, we now see that God had prepared that then known world with this word logos to describe the person of Jesus – In the beginning was the Logos…and the Logos was God…and the Logos became a human being.

Logos was the big idea and design plan of God’s own purpose and intention for humanity. When Paul was spoken to by the Logos, Jesus, that totally re-ordered his belief system and his personal world and his whole life. He began to live each day alongside Jesus as his disciple consciously allowing the Holy Spirit to bring the DNA of the implanted logos seed into the unfolding of his life’s destiny and purpose.

THE MORAL CONSCIENCE AND THE LOGOS

The apostle Peter’s tradition gave him a moral conscience of what was right and wrong according to the Jewish religion. Peter had already lived alongside Jesus, the Logos, the Word made flesh, for over three years as his disciple, and he knew him and loved him as a friend, but it took Peter a long time to let go of his former belief system of living under the Law of Judaism that he grew up with. His Jewish tradition gave him a moral conscience of the letter of the Law, but it was no longer fully aligned with what the Holy Spirit was saying according to the Logos, or Word of truth in the spirit. New Testament Scriptures point out the difference between two different types of conscience (Hebrews 9:14, 10:22,6:22). These Scriptures show us that there is the natural moral conscience and there is the Spiritual conscience which is aligned with the mind and heart of Jesus the Logos. Hebrews 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from bondage to the morality of human tradition (dead works) into life-giving service the living God.

All of humanity has been given a natural conscience by God, to discern the difference between right and wrong. Adam and Eve had that conscience before they disobeyed God because they were told that it was wrong to eat of the tree of knowledge. That is why they felt guilt and shame and covered their shame with fig leaves and hid from God. Humanity has been doing that ever since, hiding from God and covering their shame.

Our personal moral conscience about what is right and wrong has been formed broadly by our culture or religion and it guides our values and our decisions. This means that our natural or personal conscience can only inform us of the right and wrong of our culture or tradition, and in many areas we can be calling right wrong and calling wrong right. God once showed Peter a vision of all kinds of animals that were forbidden for Jews to eat and he then told Peter to eat those animals as food. Peter refused to eat what he believed to be unclean food, alright maybe for gentiles but not fit for Jews, and so Peter told God that he was wrong! He said ‘Not so Lord’. It is actually a contradiction to say ‘not so’ and ‘Lord’ in the same statement. God then had to say to Peter ‘do not call unclean what I have cleansed’. God was telling Peter that he was inviting all of humanity, and their food, into the Kingdom of God alongside his people Israel as his children and as brothers and sisters to his Son Jesus. A natural conscience of human tradition is called in the Bible an evil or a harmful (poneros) conscience (Hebrews 10:22). Peter was judging all of humanity outside of Judaism as being unclean and not worthy or eat with or to even enter into their house. That judgment was now a morally harmful and unloving act in the eyes of God, who then told Peter to go into the house of a gentile (Cornelius) and preach the Gospel of Jesus to him. Peter had to have his harmful conscience gradually transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit who brings our conscience into line with God’s heart of Logos truth and love.

Jesus had told his disciples that when he went to be with his Father he would send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin. That means all of humanity after Jesus has the Holy Spirit actively working upon them in their spirit, where the conscience resides, bringing an awareness of the love and forgiveness of God for their sins and turning their hearts (repentance) toward God and away from darkness (like a plant turns towards the sunshine). When we respond to this movement of the Spirit and acknowledge what Jesus has done for us we then actively receive the Holy Spirit so that it is now an abiding of our spirit with the Holy Spirit in a pathway forward of our transformation from a natural life to a spiritual life in Christ.

Paul was literally exploded out of his natural and religious moral conscience under the Law. He had been a hostile enemy of Jesus until he met him on the road to Damascus. Paul had been hunting down Jewish Christians and putting them in jail and sentencing them to death. He had actually just been part of the stoning to death of the martyr Stephen before he set off on the road to Damascus. The last thing that Stephen said to the Jewish elders and Pharisees before he died was ‘You are always resisting the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, you obstinate and hard hearted murderers of those who were sent to proclaim the coming of the Messiah’ (Acts 7:51).

Those words were still ringing in Paul’s ears when he was confronted by Jesus on that road that day, and when he was spoken to by Jesus Logos on that road, he had already been getting pricked in his conscience and angrily kicking against those promptings of Holy Spirit

Jesus knew what was happening in Paul’s conscience and he said to him ‘It is hard for you to kick against the pricks’ (Acts 9:5). Paul then asked Jesus ‘What must I do Lord?’ Paul’s conscience was then brought into line with Logos truth and he began to live not as a hostile enemy but as a close friend of Jesus.

All of humanity have a corruptible human seed of life from the DNA of our parents, and since Jesus we now have the incorruptible seed of life from the spiritual DNA of God implanted by Jesus, the Logos, through the Holy Spirit. We are encouraged to humbly reach in our hearts and minds and embrace the Logos. James 1.21 Receive with meekness the implanted (emphytos) Logos that is able to save (restore and reorder) your soul.

ONLY BY FAITH IS THAT IMPLANTED SEED GERMINTATED INTO GROWTH AND FRUIT BEARING Satan has planted into the minds all of humanity the seed of the Lie that we are all alienated from the life of God in Adam. God has planted the seed of oneness with himself into the life of all humanity in Jesus. (Romans 5:18)

We have both those seeds within us, the natural from Adam and the spiritual from Jesus. We choose which one to cultivate and live from. The natural seed tends towards disorder and the alienation in our minds from the life of God and the spiritual seed (Logos) tends towards order and oneness with God and the renewing of our minds. A seed brings something into being. which one will we invest in? The natural seed is about self and what things I want for myself. The Logos seed is about working together with God to release to others the goodness of God that we have received.

The Jesus Word of Logos is our blueprint that will live in us and bring understanding, truth and wisdom into any and every situation we face. As we still our hearts and minds and give attention to that one big Idea of the life giving and life changing seed of life within us Holy Spirit will inspire in us acts of virtue and courage, feelings of joy and peace, and God’s love deep within our hearts. It is an odd wonder that the Christmas event of the birth of Jesus, the ‘Word made flesh’ is celebrated around the world every year – even by people who do not understand or believe in the cosmic truth it contains. That is just one more welcome for Jesus to be believed in by ALL of humanity because it is for ALL humanity, but our lives of love and grace to others is the greatest welcome for so many who are desperately waiting for something better to happen in their lives. So let us gratefully receive that seed of life and invest in that seed and cultivate it so that it grows and bears the fruit of the blessing of God’s love and care that will go out and be that blessing for all those in our world in Jesus name Amen.

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Some Christians DO observe the 7th Day as their Sabbath, but Most Christians don’t keep this one. So who is right and who is wrong?

For this Commandment the question of right and wrong involves the problem of us judging one another, as we do about many other things. It was a contentious issue between the Pharisees and Jesus in the Gospels and between Christians in the early church in the epistles. And we still judge each other today. Romans 14:1-6. Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things...One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it.

What is the Scriptural reason for most Christians to not observe the 7th day?

New Testament scripture reveals that this commandment refers not to a ritual observance of one day in each week, but to the every-day life of faith, which is the rest that we enter into as Christians, in the finished work of Christ. This rest is spoken of in the epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. Hebrews 4:9-11 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of unbelief and disobedience. ALSO Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath days, 17. which are a shadow of things to come but the substance is of Christ.

Did Israel fully obey the Sabbath Rest? Yes and no. They obeyed the seventh day but they missed the essential aspect of FAITH and trust in God. They were told to rest for one year in seven and enjoy relating to each other as a family and a community together and to watch God supernaturally grow the crops for them. So they failed to observe that for 490 years since the time of King Saul. Divide 490 by seven and you get seventy. The bible says that they would go into captivity for 70 years in Babylon because they failed to give the land rest… 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 And to those who escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, 21. to fulfil the word of The Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths, ... to fulfil seventy years. ALSO (concerning Israel) Hebrews 4:4 For the Scripture mentions the seventh day saying: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; and in another place: “They shall not enter My rest.”

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THE HIDDEN COMMANDMENT There is a commandment that does not get a mention in the Ten Commandments but that is being indicated right throughout the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, especially in the Prophets and in many Psalms (Isaiah 12:6, Psalm 31:14 John 14:27). It the New Testament the commandment is stated as ‘Be anxious for nothing’.

Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

It is about trusting God and having the ‘peace of God’ instead of the ‘peace of the world’, which is what Jesus stated to his disciples that he wanted us to have (John 14:27). This is a fervent commitment that God wants us to make for our own sakes, but also for him, so that we can develop a loving and trusting relationship with him, which is what he desires above all else.

We are living in a time when there is a pressing need to appropriate God’s peace. The elusive peace of the world is the illusion that you can remove any threat to your safety and security and satisfaction in your personal world if you’re smart enough or tough enough or lucky enough. However it is a well known fact that watching or listening to or reading any form of news media these days is mostly an experience of hearing about all the bad things that are happening. Even when good things happen the media does not tend to report them let alone feature them because the bad news gets more attention and getting more attention in a competitive industry like news media means more success and more followers and more influence. There are good things that are happening, but the bad things make the news. So, pursuing the peace of the world is problematic, complex, elusive and ultimately false, and all of this of course gets magnified on social media

There is something called the negativity bias. It is that giving attention to a negative experience even if it is overwhelmingly surrounding by positive experiences will cause a longer lasting negative emotional impact upon us than the positive experience. For example if you work with ten people and nine of them say good things about you and one is always speaking negatively about you, guess what will keep you awake at night.

This condition of anxiety and uncertainty because of negative bias is the state of our global emotional existence today, particularly in times of trying to manage a global pandemic.

There are many good things happening but the bad things make the news.

Let me to some extent offset the effect of negative bias a little by presenting some unnoticed global facts that don’t make headlines in the media. These are some of the many good things that have happened over the last forty years that go unreported. There are plenty of sources for this information but a handy compendium of facts can be found at - Our World in Data – (Google it)

Here is a handful of good news items… Global absolute poverty has decreased from 40% in 1980 to 10 % in 2020.

Starvation has been dramatically reduced in India and Africa and China (apart from political agendas) by the introduction of better and stronger strains of the many varieties of wheat grasses amongst many other things.

Despite the fear of overpopulation in the1970’s and the threat of running out of resources, the world population has grown by 70% over the last forty years but has resulted in more wealth and better health and disease eradication.

There are also many countries over the last forty years that have a more sustainable lifestyle balance regarding health and longevity and well-being.

There are no horizons to these improvements because of technological advancement and global agreement about them.

Focusing upon the bad news creates an enormous amount of personal anxiety and social instability because of the pressure of having to overcome so many obstacles that threaten our inner peace. This is not only in regard to world news but it touches deeply the anxieties within our own personal emotional and spiritual lives as we carry the burden of our own personal situations and the burdens of those we care for.

The hidden good news in the world is also a reflection of the hidden good news of our personal faith (Hebrews 11:1 faith is the assurance of God’s activity in the world of the unseen) - but we still get drawn in by the devious negative bias in our emotional and spiritual lives.

The word for the Gospel ‘The Good News’ is euaggelion. In ancient times this was the traditional message of victory that was dispatched by the conquering kings and rulers that had to be declared to all the citizens in the region. This would mean that everyone could now live in peace.

We live within the blessing of the ‘Gospel of Peace’. John 14:27 Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

There is a way to predispose our mind to God’s perfect peace, whatever the problematic or dismal conditions are that exist. We cannot imagine some set of flawless and ideal circumstances or direct how everyone should behave so that we would not have one single problem in the world. What this perfect peace requires is for our hearts to be awakened to God’s perfect peace under any imperfect conditions. Then we can bring that peace into any situation and respond with effective action and God’s presence.

How does our heart get awakened to God’s peace? Peace means oneness, Eirene and that is the key. We share God’s life through the Holy Spirit and he awakens us to the peace and oneness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Joined to thr lord How can we live as though our problem or affliction is something to not worry about? The only way is for a person to believe that someone else is taking care of that for us.

How do we know that they will sort it out just the way we want it? We don’t. It’s not a matter of getting everything the way we want it. We have to trust that the person we hand the care over to will do the sorting out in their own perfect way. 1Peter 5:7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

This is a commitment. We commit our strategy of sorting it out to someone else. The strategic activity is now being planned by experts, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So do we forget about the whole thing and ignore what is going on? No. So what do we do? We attend to the situation responsibly, with a new measure of patience and calm, confident that God is strategizing situations for us in the world of the unseen. Then we stay on the alert to respond to any signpost that is a pointer to act upon or to speak into the situation as it evolves. One signpost may simply lead to another signpost but our patience in this is our sign of persistence in prayer as we continue to bring before him our faith that he has it all in hand, for his outcome.

We have an anointed guide, the Holy Spirit who teaches us as we go forward 1John 2:27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

There are actually more good things than bad things happening in our lives as we see things this way, that everything is working together for God’s best for our inner life and inner peace when they are placed in God’s hands. As we trust him and partner with him in this way there are many other things that God is reordering in his hidden way in the circumstances of our lives and in the lives of those we care for. The transformation of our inner lives involves God helping us overcome the hopelessness of the past to open us up to hopefulness for the future. That overcomes anxiety – it surpasses what our mind can grasp about overcoming anxiety and allows faith and trust in God’s hidden power in us, and that surpasses all understanding. That is the peace of God.

The moment we take the anxiety back upon our-selves we have stopped having faith, and things start looking bad again and so we can end up persevering in our anxiety instead of persevering in faith. Faith is about what God is strategically doing, not what we are anxiously claiming what he should do. Faith is about God’s activity not ours. He gives – we receive. What is not of faith is sin (we miss the mark) Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

So we pour out our anxiety to God and let him pour in his peace. We can bring to mind the ten second pause of ‘be still and know that I am God’. These precious segments or times of attention if applied more frequently and faithfully in our lives allow us to live more and more in the peace of God, being anxious for nothing. I call this presence prayer.

I was asked very recently whether fasting a good thing to do spiritually. My response was that fasting is not a supernatural activity but it is a spiritual discipline in the sense that it brings us to the place of letting something go so that we can draw closer to God. It is not transactional as in telling God you will fast so then he will do something for you. Letting go of something of self is the opposite of wanting to add something to self. We do not let go of things in order for God to add other things – we let go of things in order to gain Christ. That means food, it means time and it means anxiety. That is the cross bringing about resurrection. How much do we want to gain Christ? We don’t stop eating or using our minds or stop solving problems. We live a balanced life of thanksgiving for the blessings in our lives. At your right hand there are pleasure forevermore (Psalm 16:11) Footy in wonderful company including The Lord’s.

We have something to bring into each and every situation –

A Reality regarding the facts. Face what is happening as things really are. The negative bias is a cunning ally of darkness. Afflictions and challenges are part of the pattern of real life and different challenges happens to us at different stages of life. Where these things occur God’s grace much more occurs.

A plan of action- we attend to the situation responsibly, trusting that God is at work doing the hidden good thing that is needed. We don’t give up simply because we are aware of our human weakness and limitation. His strength is made perfect in our honest Confession of our weakness.

A commitment to persevere. We commit to continually returning to that place of trust when anxiety tries to overwhelm us. We come to you now Lord that we may let go of things that we may gain you. Amen.

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You will be as God? Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image (selem – a representation, resemblance), after our own likeness (mut – as us, like us). There are significant differences in the two words, however this statement ‘You will be as God’, or ‘like God’ was declared from the beginning by both Lucifer and God. The first we hear this statement is from out of the mouth of the serpent in the garden of Eden. Genesis 3:4 And the serpent said, Death will not certainly come to you: For God sees that on the day when you take of its fruit, your eyes will be open, and you will be as God, having knowledge of good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and gave it to her husband.

Those tempting words from the place of darkness provoked a hidden longing in the heart of humanity to be like God. The very same hidden longing to ‘be as God’ had already been consummated within the heart of pride within Lucifer and was now being passed on to humanity, his greatest rival among created beings. Isaiah 14:12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground--mighty though you were against the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, "I will ascend to heaven, I will exalt my throne and rule the angels. I will preside on the Mount of the north, the place of the heavenly council. I will climb to the highest heavens. I will be as the Most High." But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of hell, down to its lowest depths.

This aspiration to be ‘like God’ or ‘as God’ is something that is pursued by those who walk in great darkness as well as those who walk in great light. It was said first in the Book of Genesis by the serpent where ‘being as God’ is connected to possessing the knowledge of good and evil whereby each person redefines the meaning of good and bad as being what is good or bad for them personally. However ‘being as God’ is more deeply embedded in the human psyche than we might think. God even corroborates the serpent’s words to Eve in some respects when he drives man out of the garden.

Genesis 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever…” The word ‘lest’ in that sentence allows it to hang in the air unfinished. It is as if the Lord wants us to ask; ‘And…? And what, and why?’ There is a ‘please explain’ there somewhere. and before the verse even allows time for discussion it describes God going into action - therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden. God bans humanity from having access to the way of the tree of life. In Isaiah 6.9 (spoken by Isaiah) and in Mark 4:12 (spoken by Jesus) and in Acts 28 (Paul) there is another similarly intriguing scripture that uses the word ‘lest’ in such a way that it also leaves us hanging in the air so to speak, asking the question ‘why Lord?’ and even ‘when Lord?’ or ‘for how long Lord?’ God is telling Isaiah what effect his preaching will have when he proclaims it. Isaiah 6:9 When you preach to them tell them they will keep on hearing, but not understand, keep on seeing, but not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Please explain Lord, I have a question… The correct question here is ‘How long Lord’ and that is indeed what Isaiah does ask, and The Lord gives him a sobering answer. Isaiah 9:11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land”. This answer in some ways strangely describes the days in which we live… So back here in the garden of Eden we have the unfinished ‘lest’ sentence swallowed up by; “therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard (sapor – preserve and reserve the way (path, road, journey) to the tree of life”. God did not let Adam and Eve or any other human being have access to the tree of life (until Jesus) and he guarded the way to it with angels and a flaming sword. God is somehow letting us touch the mystery of eternal life.

THE BAD, THE GOOD, AND THE IN-BETWEEN ASPECTS OF ‘BEING LIKE GOD’ ‘Being as God’ is seen in its darkest shadowy form in many narcissistic egomaniacs in their consuming passion of having control over everything in their world, which is impossible, but which is striven for with whatever devious power they can lay hold of. This is seen in cruel tyrants such as Pharaoh, Alexander the great, Caesar, and many others in ancient history and they were regarded by the people and by themselves as a god). Then there are the modern-day practitioners like Stalin and Hitler who acted as deluded savior gods convincing the people that they were needed o save the nation and its heritage and honour and status of dignity and equality in the world.. The term for this kind of grandiosity is ‘apotheosis’ (elevated by pride to divine status).

In its common or everyday form ‘being as God’ sits unnoticed and invisibly nested within the individual sovereignty of all of humanity under God, even if they don’t believe in God, because all of humanity was created in God’s image, or resemblance, or shadow. This includes the responsible citizens of good conscience who honour their social and political freedom which is a God given responsibility and status. It just so happens that nobody generally goes around thinking about this or saying it or discussing it, but this is a hidden reality that has been sown into humanity through a vast range of other expressions of individuality. A vast number of people worldwide would fall into the worldview of Secular humanism even if they may not describe themselves as such. They may believe that God is not necessary to be a moral and ethical person. In that sense they have become ‘as God’ by replacing faith in God with philosophical truth and reason as the basis of morality and decision making, rejecting religious doctrine or the supernatural, even though they may retain Christian values without Christian faith. Then there are the more energetic zealots of ideological activism who uphold some collective opinion as to how everybody should think and act on certain social issues of social justice or financial equality or health practices etc, and they find their collective identity in those ideologies. They often make their ideological opinions into virtues and become ‘as God’ in judging and even penalizing others for not agreeing with their virtue or morality.

However, ‘Being as God’ in its highest and most noble form is more than just being created in God’s image or resemblance. We are now talking about being made in his ‘likeness’ or ‘’as him’ in our inner being. It involves having a heart to worship God and to trust in his divine love and goodness and to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into his likeness. It also involves being willing to be discipled by God as our Father who delights to grow us in faith and love both for him and for one another, no matter what race or culture or gender or personality or status. This is being ‘as Him in the world.’ (1John 4:17)

2Peter 1:4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by corrupt human desires.

1Corinthians 3:18 … as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him.

This was the reality of the life of Jesus. Philippians 2:7 who, though his essential being was fully as God, did not use the grandeur of being equal with God something to be promoted but he humbled himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And serving obediently to the point of dying on the cross for us.

So as his disciples we are called to not just represent Jesus but to embody his life. In other words when Jesus died and rose from the dead and went to be with his Father he sent the Holy Spirit to live within us according to our own unique and individual life. Our inflated egoic self is now constantly being invited to empty itself of pride and independence and self-importance and emotionally opinionated judgments. That tree of life can now live through giving us his wisdom in things through faith and love. By faith we dare to become what without faith we are afraid to be - a vulnerable human being, but a real person, with real meaning in our lives. We have a saviour, and a leader, and a commander, in Jesus. If we always come to Jesus in this way and abide in him in utter faith, as vulnerable ordinary people, we will always find his strength and know his power and love. We draw aside from all other thoughts and focus on the one great thought of God toward us, that through the power of his Holy Spirit he is changing us into his likeness. This is an ever present reality of faith.

‘Being like God’ should be front and centre of our minds and being. It is our destiny and the ultimate goal of God for us that gives meaning to our existence no matter what the status or circumstances of our lives. You will be as God, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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THE HIDDEN TREE OF LIFE In the story of creation, the Bible says there were two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden. They were the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Genesis 2:9 And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

‘In the midst’ does not mean ‘in the middle’. The word midst (taewk) is mostly translated as ‘midst’ and rarely translated a middle (209 vs 7) If I told someone that I saw them in the midst of the crowd it would not mean that they were in the very centre surrounded by everyone else. So we are not talking about two trees standing side by side, on grand display in the centre of the garden. However, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the tree that was featured and even showcased in the story.  It was the tree that God told Adam not to eat from and it was the tree that became their literal downfall through disobedience.

THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TREES A tree is part of the order of living creation and it is rooted in part of the non-living order of creation, the earth. Adam was created out of the earth and the word adamah means the ‘ground or earth’, from where we get the name Adam. So the spiritual significance of the two spiritual trees is that both trees are rooted in humanity. Both of these trees declare the powerful symbolism of something which has life and bears fruit and is rooted in the earth, or the ‘adamah’, the ‘Adam’ of our humanity. 

THE COMMANDMENT AND THE CONSEQUENCE OF DISOBEDIENCE Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God gave the man an order, saying, You may freely take of the fruit of every tree of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you.

THE TEMPTATION AND THE FALL Genesis 3:4 And the serpent said, Death will not certainly come to you: For God sees that on the day when you take of its fruit, your eyes will be open, and you will be as God, having knowledge of good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and gave it to her husband. And their eyes were open and they were conscious that they had no clothing and they made themselves coats of leaves stitched together.

Adam and Eve were the first of human creation to be tempted by darkness to eat of the tree of knowledge and they were the first to experience the TRAGIC downfall of disobedience and sin. All of humanity is tempted by darkness to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and all have eaten and all have fallen, not just because of Adam falling, but as well as Adam falling (Romans 3:23). They just happened to be the first. They had a conscience before they were tempted, so they knew right from wrong just like us, but the temptation was too great for their UNTESTED human nature TO RESIST. There is one exception, and that is Jesus, who was tempted in every way just as we are, being human, and yet he did not ever miss the mark or fall into disobedience because he had a relationship of perfect integrity and harmony and unconditional love with his Father. He was in alignment with his Father’s heart (righteous) and so he did not sin, and he did not fall. He was born from above and had the seed of life from his Father through the Holy Spirit (UNLIKE ADAM), and so was also born into his mother Mary’s humanity. 

1Peter 1.23   we were born again not through corruptible but incorruptible seed– logos – the seed from above…

Through their disobedience Adam and Eve broke relationship with God from them to God, but it was NEVER broken from God to them – or to us. They were the ones who broke the harmony, the openness and freedom and their trusting friendship with God.  They were told by the serpent that when they ate the fruit they would NOT die, AND here they were, still alive, so what did ‘you will surely die’ mean? There was going to be a physical death and a spiritual death. In the New Testament there are two words for life. They are ‘bios’ (biological life) and zoe (spiritual or Godly life). When they sinned against God and their own conscience something triggered an inner emotional and spiritual mess within them. Their eyes were opened for them to see that they were unclothed, exposed for who they now were. Shame and guilt and fear rushed into their lives uninvited. They tried to cover themselves with leaves, and a life of covering up began for humanity. Their relationship with God had been one of unconditional love, but now everything became conditional to a new mindset of what good and evil meant.

They had died spiritually by cutting themselves off in mind and heart from the life of God, the source of all forms of life on the earth and they retreated into an independent experience of their own ‘separated self’ life. They had ceased to consciously make the life of God central in their minds and hearts and became confused as to the meaning of life itself. Life from that moment on was now perceived to belong to oneself so that each person had to make a conscious choice whether or not to share the personal rights of their life with God or anyone else. This became the beginning of conditional relationships for humanity instead of unconditional love.  It became the mission of darkness to destroy Godly covenant relationships between people and God and also with one another, where we can allow certain other people to share our own personal rights as a human being and where people thinking of themselves as ‘belonging’ to another person as in marriage. We all live with the relational consequences of the fruit of that first act of disobedience to this time.

The Bible describes the plight of people living in this state of spiritual death. Ephesians 4:18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, without the knowledge of God because of the blindness of their heart. 

This is speaking about people who have become self-conscious rather than God conscious. All those things are the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve’s minds had become alienated from the life of God yet they were nonetheless still being impacted by the life of God because they had been created in his image so that his goodness and mercy and blessing still came upon them and could be reflected through them to one another so they could still be kind and loving if they chose to. And even though unconditional love became an uncommon thing for us it always remained in God’s heart towards us. Great is his faithfulness even in our unfaithfulness.

There is actually nothing wrong with the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge blesses mankind in a myriad of ways and it is powerfully productive and helpful. The problem arises when we contend with the fierce ownership of our own individual rights that we believe are ‘good’ for us. Darkness sows suspicion and mistrust into our judgment of what is good and what is bad. What is good is now judged on the basis of what is good for me, no matter how it seems to someone else, and what is bad is judged by what is bad the way I see it, no matter whether it seems good to someone else. The closer a thing comes to what we like or want to happen for ourselves, the more it is good, and whatever prevents us from having that thing is bad, and that is why we can make such lopsided and discriminatory judgments against God and against one another. 

This is how humanity is tempted to live in its perception of what is objectively good and bad. Our eyes have been opened to see we must defend or assert our exposed and vulnerable selves. We live in a world of wrongly judging ourselves and one another. 

That is why Adam and Eve judged the fruit of the tree of knowledge to be good for them in every way. It was sold to them as being of beautiful appearance, good to taste and pleasing to the senses, and able to bestow special knowledge and wisdom. Mankind at that moment began to prize those things, and they judged God’s advice to them of not eating the fruit as being bad. They believed the lie that what they now thought was good for them was being cheated of them by God himself. The outwardly self-gratifying life became more important than the inwardly fulfilling and satisfying life of trusting relationships, first with God and then with others. The fruit of the tree of knowledge was not only on splendid display for Adam and Eve to see, and tantalizingly forbidden to eat, but sitting amongst its branches was a cunning deceitful serpent. Nothing has changed regarding this tree and we are all constantly being confronted by this reality. The fruit of this tree has deeply affected the way people, especially in affluent cultures, live out their lives.  Even in Christianity there is a tendency to conform to the competitive performance-oriented success culture of the world rather than the inner transformational power of the exchanged life of Jesus. The outward display orientation has its source in the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The powerful inner reality of faith and love has its source in the tree of life. It seems that the western culture finds the outward display irresistible, and only when there is either persecution or a sovereign move of the Holy Spirit do the values of the inner life of God change the hearts of humanity and glorify God instead of man. But there is a better way.

THE HIDDEN WAY OF THE TREE OF LIFE The tree of life was somehow strangely out of sight or out of mind or both, throughout the time of Adam and Eve and God and the serpent in the garden, They were not given any commandment concerning the tree of life because God didn’t even mention it except at the very end. Humanity was obviously destined to eat of the tree of life in due course and there was access to it, but this did not seem to be the time, and in fact only after eating of the tree of knowledge was the way to the tree of life blocked. Then God did not let Adam and Eve or any other human being have access to the tree of life and he guarded the way to it with cherubim and a flaming sword. Genesis 3: 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard (sapor – preserve and reserve) the way (path, road, journey) to the tree of life.

There was however an appointed time for mankind to be shown the way of access to the tree of life, but for the time being it was forbidden, and the way was hidden. There was one exception, and that is Jesus, who is the tree of life, and who is also rooted in Adam (adamah – the earth) as a human being, but who contained eternal life and bore the fruit of the tree of Life (The fruit of the Spirit and the power of the Spirit). He was born from above. The life and power of God was hidden as a hidden tree of life not only in the garden but within the humble humanity of Jesus.

Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the LORD revealed his power? My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected - a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Jesus did not try to attract people to himself or to put his power on display to impress people. This was a new kind of behaviour from someone of such power and authority, and even his disciples wanted him to display his Kingdom authority when they wanted to call the fire of judgment down on those who resisted and opposed him (Luke 9:54).  They had always been attracted to and influenced by the tree of knowledge, but Jesus came as the tree of life and made himself of no reputation to become a servant to humanity (Philippians 2:7). They had no understanding of this hidden truth, the hidden tree.  It’s meaning was mysteriously hidden throughout the OT even though it was mentioned. But now it was with them veiled in his humility like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected.

This is in stark contrast to much of Christian activity today, that wants to be on display as the agent of God’s power and judgment of what is good and evil.  The Bible does not say that knowledge is bad, but it shows how the self-centred use of knowledge differs from the blessing of a caring relationship 1Corinthians 8:1 Knowledge puffs up (inflates the ego) but love builds up… The tree of life is hidden in the ordinariness of our New Creation humanity that is joined life to life with Jesus.  Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. This means that we died with Christ and now live with him. When Jesus went on the cross as a human being he took us as humanity, with him.… We now had access to another tree to live out of instead just the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We can now live our lives choosing the tree of life over the tree of knowledge. The pathway is God’s love - Total trust in Gods unconditional love coming to us – we trust that he knows what is good for us even if we don’t. The inflated EGO me is now constantly being invited to empty itself of pride and independence and self importance and emotionally opinionated judgments and to eat of the fulness of the hidden tree of life that is now able to live through us. We ask for and receive his wisdom in things – and love can grow and flow. That is the fruit that Jesus spoke of that would spring up out of the ground when he gave his life as a seed to die and be buried and rise again with us from the dead (John 12:24). This enables us to bless God and one another and to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world through a life of humble service.

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Commandment Three – Taking God’s name in vain

Does this Commandment mean more than just people using God’s name in swearing?

How do Christians use God’s name in vain?

What does God’s name mean?

What does it mean for God to ‘not hold people guiltless’ for taking his name in vain?

Does this Commandment operate for people who do not believe in God?

All the commandments deal with relationships, and this commandment focuses on a very real aspect of a relationship, and a very important aspect, which is the name of the Person with whom we have a relationship. It is bad enough to have one's name forgotten, but even worse, to have it abused or exploited.

Don’t rob God’s name of its meaning and power by using it to promote your own futile campaign. God does not count such harmful schemes as innocent (not hold him guiltless).

Seeking of endorsement for our own name is really the seeking of endorsement for the self -images that we have been building, according to the fault addressed in the previous commandment which was the making and serving of images. 

It is the basic insecurity within every image-maker that does not trust in God that creates a compulsion to attach credibility to that image by borrowing the fame or success of someone else's achievement or reputation. 

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ASCENSION AFTER FORTY DAYS From 'The Plan' Paul O'Sullivan - Sydney, Australia. pauloss@me.com Jesus had brought millions of souls from the grave to the sky and his time in heaven for the celebration of this victorious journey was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day. He would now spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection, to seal The Plan of his Father and see it implemented for the rest of time. At the end of those forty days he would return to Heaven, to begin his new mission upon the planet. After that he would wait for ten more days before sending Holy Spirit to begin the new mission of the ‘Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’

Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in Jesus mouth, and Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth. In fifty days after his resurrection (Pentecost pente=fifty), and after Jesus had returned back to heaven Holy Spirit would become the bond between heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God. This would now become the mission of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, in Heaven and on earth.

That same day Jesus returned to earth in a glorified body that could never ever die again. Mark 16:9 After that, He appeared in another form (heteros morphe – an altered form or nature) to two of them as they walked and went into the country.

His body was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body. In this spiritual yet natural body Jesus could appear anywhere and at any time. He could feel and be touched, could breathe and eat, and walk and talk, all of which he did when he resumed his earthly visit. He came back and saw again the bewilderment and confusion in this world of uncertainty that people cling to so fervently, and he wanted to see all this change. He arrived in Jerusalem and heard that the temple priests had fabricated a story that his body had been stolen by the disciples and that they had overcome the temple guards and raided the tomb. He also heard that his disciples were still doubting that he had risen from the dead, even though some of them had come to the tomb and seen it empty, and some women had spoken to the angels.

He set off walking from Jerusalem in the direction of Galilee, where he had said he would meet with his disciples. It was then that he saw the two men walking together in serious discussion and he recognized them (these were the men mentioned in that Scripture about Jesus appearing in another form). They were men who would have often come to listen to him and ask questions along with many other disciples. He greeted them and joined them as they walked, but Holy Spirit had supernaturally veiled their eyes from recognizing him. He listened as they spoke and detected the same mood of bewilderment, if not depression, that seemed to be hanging over everybody. He politely commented that they seemed to be bothered about something that was going on locally, and he asked what that might be.

The one called Cleopas gave Jesus a puzzled look and said to Jesus that he must be the only visitor in Jerusalem that hadn’t heard about what had happened. So when Jesus asked Cleopas to spell out what he meant the two men smiled at each other and the other man began to patiently explain about the man called Jesus, a great man whom they had both followed and believed in. They enthusiastically recounted some of the miracles he had worked, and that he was a prophet, the greatest of them all. Cleopas broke in and added that Jesus stood up for justice and taught them about God. They thought he was going to turn the world upside down and make everything new for them. Jesus pushed them further for more details and they said they had expected that there would be freedom and prosperity for the Jews for a start.

There was a pause, then one of them gave a sigh and told Jesus how the temple priests had convicted Jesus as a criminal and how he was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and that today was the third day since these things happened. When Jesus asked them to explain the significance of the third day the two men looked at one another awkwardly and one of them shrugged and said that the man Jesus had said he would rise from the dead after three days. Cleopas took up the story again and explained that some of the women even went to the tomb and found it empty and reported they saw two angels who said he was alive, and that some of his very own disciples also went to the tomb and found it empty. He too shrugged as he finished talking.

Jesus nodded and remained silent for a few paces as he walked alongside the two men. He then very pointedly asked them why on earth they didn’t just believe what they had been told by Jesus himself. The other man condescendingly and a little impatiently, replied that they hadn't seen anything, so what were they expected to believe? It was then that Jesus quietly declared to them that they should have opened their hearts to what God had revealed, and simply believed what Jesus and all the prophets had spoken, that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter into his glory. He then began to speak about all the Scriptures concerning himself. He spoke in detail of the Plan of Father to send The Son into the world. He taught them from the words of Scripture about prophesies which outlined the details of his birth, and his life and death, and his resurrection. Something happened in their hearts as they listened to him, even though they still didn’t recognize who he was. And the next thing they knew they were close to Emmaus, which was their destination.

They didn't want Jesus to stop talking so they appealed to him to stay with them, even though he told them he was going further. They asked him to at least stay and have a meal, so Jesus accepted their offer. During the meal Jesus took some bread, and gave thanks for it, and as he broke the bread their eyes were opened and immediately they recognized who he was. This was the ordinary, extraordinary moment, sitting at a table, life happening, very natural yet very spiritual, eye to eye and heart to heart. Jesus heard Father speaking to him from heaven, telling him that this was the way it was going to be. Holy Spirit would be the one who would open peoples’ eyes to see him and know him as he really was, and that was the way The Plan would be implemented from heaven to earth. Jesus then heard Holy Spirit whisper to him; “People will speak the truth about you, and I will reveal you to them.” The next moment Jesus vanished from their sight

After Jesus vanished from their sight the two men decided to go back into Jerusalem and find the disciples who were in hiding, afraid of what was going to happen to them because of the rumors that were going about that they had stolen Jesus’ body. They found them and were whisked inside and the doors were locked behind them. They told them of their journey with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and their miraculous meal with him where he had suddenly vanished. The disciples were ecstatic that Jesus was back from the dead, and while they were still talking Jesus appeared in their midst while the doors remained locked. The disciples panicked, and thought they were seeing a ghost, but Jesus explained to them that he was not a ghost because a ghost didn’t have bones and flesh, and he asked them to touch his hands and his feet and to see for themselves.

Jesus stretched forth his hands and his peace hit their hearts. He breathed his Spirit upon them and they received the impartation of his peace and they immediately felt at one with Jesus and with each other. This was just a mere foretaste of what was to come, as it would only be after his final ascension and being seated at the right hand of Father that Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell within them. On the day of Pentecost Holy Spirit would be sent from Father and from himself upon all humanity. That peace is also the air we can now breathe and that peace is what we can also now impart to others.

He could still see their bewilderment, and he knew he had to convince them in some ordinary way that he was real and alive again. So he asked them if he could have something to eat. James scurried to the fire and brought back some steamed fish, and some honeycomb, and held the mixed platter out at arm's length as Jesus accepted it and ate it with gusto. He looked around the room and noticed that Thomas was not amongst them. He asked them why they didn't go to Galilee where he said he would be going to meet them. They shuffled about without giving an answer, and Jesus told them he would see them in a few days at Galilee, and he vanished once more.

The disciples gathered at Galilee where they used to gather in the large boat shed that belonged to James and John's fisherman father, where they tended to the boats and net repairs. It was situated snugly in a grove overlooking the beach. Peter had been waiting with the others and had then become restless and asked James and John to come fishing with him to get some food for Jesus to eat. While the three were out fishing Jesus suddenly appeared to the others as they sat patiently, waiting for his arrival. When Thomas saw Jesus appear he walked hesitatingly towards him and stopped in front of him. Jesus knew that Thomas had not believed that he had risen, even after the other disciples had said that they had seen him. Jesus held out his hands towards Thomas and told him to touch his hands where the nails had pierced, and to touch his side where the Centurion’s lance had entered his side. Thomas broke down and wept, and told Jesus that he believed. Jesus gently acknowledged his faith, that in seeing and touching he now believed. He went on to tell Thomas that there would be many who will believe without even seeing him and that they would be greatly blessed for that kind of faith. Jesus comforted him and he disappeared again.

Jesus appeared to them again one morning after seven of them had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. He stood on the shore and watched them fishing but they didn't realize that it was him. He shouted out to the fishermen from the shore, asking them if they had yet caught anything. A disgruntled ‘No’ came from Peter to this expert on the seashore, who responded to Peter by telling him to cast his net on the other side of the boat. Peter was about to explode when he heard John cry out that the expert on the seashore was indeed Jesus, The Lord. Peter then yelled to the others to do what Jesus had said. So they threw the nets to the other side and began to pull so many fish into the boat that they could hardly keep the boat afloat. But by this time Peter had plunged into the sea, swimming for all his might to get to his friend on the seashore, leaving the crew on the boat to work together on the haul. When Peter lurched his way up onto the shore he headed straight for Jesus and collapsed in front of him. He saw that Jesus had already prepared a fire with burning coals and had fish and toasted bread ready for them to eat. He didn't ask Jesus how he got the fish. Jesus reached down and helped Peter into a sitting position and told him to go and get some more fish from the catch so they could make breakfast for the others.

After they had all enjoyed breakfast together Jesus called Peter aside. He knew there were things that had to be said between them. Peter’s soul was in a turmoil of regrets, shame and guilt. Time and again he had asked himself why he didn’t stand up for Jesus instead of disowning him three times when he was asked if he knew him - and could that have made a difference? He had remembered when the rooster crowed that Jesus had predicted that he would do just that. What was Jesus going to say to him now – would Jesus disown him, even rebuke him three times? But Jesus asked Peter three times, in three different ways whether or not Peter loved him. The love of Jesus owned Peter, and Peter passionately gave himself up to the ownership of God’s love. As a true representation of a flawed humanity owned by God’s love, Peter was mercifully forgiven and accepted. It was also this moment that owned him, not the past, or the uncertainty of the future. This would also continue to be his greatest gift to God, seeking to give each moment to his loving presence. After having his spirit and soul fed with this Word of love from Jesus, repeated three times, Peter was commissioned three times to feed God’s lambs and feed his sheep. As Peter would go on in life, he would face his many imperfections, and he would learn to return to each present moment, as in that special moment, where he could surrender to the ownership of love, shed his fears, and grow in faith as a participator in God’s nature.

Jesus met with hundreds of people over those forty days, but on the final day he gathered with just over a hundred of his disciples and followers, including his mother. Jesus then took the eleven disciples aside to give them some final instructions. He told them to go into Jerusalem and to wait for Holy Spirit’s empowerment. They were to wait in the same upper room in which he celebrated the Passover feast with them the night he was taken captive. He then told them about the fulfillment of The Plan.

Jesus explained to them that Father had always wanted to have a family of sons and daughters to share his love with them - the same way that Father had shared his love with Jesus himself. Lucifer had tried to block this Plan from the beginning of time by blinding the mind of humanity with darkness, causing a chasm of separation from the living God to exist in their minds and to devise independence in their souls. But Jesus had overpowered darkness and Holy Spirit would come to them and bring them the power of the life that he now lived. He told them he would join their lives to his risen life and they would become one in Spirit with him. Holy Spirit would take Father’s love, and his own words, and place them in the hearts of men and women, as a deep consciousness of indwelling abiding life. He told them they would together be as his body in the World, and each in their own way, gifted with grace and faith from Heaven. People and things that happened around them would change, as they themselves became more and more changed into being more like him.

A dazzling light shone within a billowing white cloud above them. Jesus turned to them all and raised his hands in blessing. He did not need to say goodbye. As he began to rise slowly heaven-wards he was enveloped in the cloud, and as they stood together looking into the cloud that had taken him they saw the shining figures of Michael and Gabriel standing to one side (Acts 1:10). Gabriel told them that the same cloud that they saw taking Jesus into eternity would also bring him back one day - in total glory and triumph, and The Plan will have been fulfilled. he End.

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When Jesus gave up his Spirit to his Father he then descended in his Spirit on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades. Jesus had spoken about these places when he told the story of The rich man and Lazarus, the beggar. The rich man who lived sumptuously in arrogant self indulgence all of his life ended up in Hades and Lazarus who lived the life of a humble beggar ended up in Paradise, with Abraham (Luke 16:19)

Jesus had now descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience. They were locked away from eternity till eternity would now come to get them. He would also visit Hades, the grave, the prison of lost hope.

The bible says that Jesus then preached to all those prisoners of time the message of the plan of Father, the Gospel. Father had sent Jesus into the world to set people free from the captivity of sin and to bring his New Creation life to humanity. This latter part of the mission of setting people free was one of setting prisoners free from the captivity of time, as they had waited as captives for heaven to come to them. Many listened and heard this message of freedom at this time. The Scriptures speak of this moment about Jesus. 1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them-- spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark. Jesus would have sat with Noah, and Adam and Eve, and Moses, and Abraham and many many others in Paradise, talking and resting with them, and he was to wait there until the end of the third day.

When John writes in the book of Revelation concerning his visions and the angelic messages of the seven angels through whom Jesus speaks to the seven churches there is the declaration of Jesus having received the keys of ‘Hell and death’ Revelation1:17,18 Fear not; I am the first and the last: -- I am he that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death. With one of the keys darkness would one day be locked away and set aside for another encounter, reserved for an appointed day at the end of time. With the other key he would now unlock the prisoners of the past from their patient pause and take many into an eternal heaven.

When Jesus turned the key of freedom in the prison gate a tremor hit the universe. Power from Father and Holy Spirit in heaven was released into and through Jesus to overcome death and the grave that changed the nature of every atom of matter in existence and brought all things that existed into a new kind of union with Christ. This was the beginning of the ‘power of the resurrection’, bringing all things that existed into Christ. Colossians 1:16 He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile (bring into a state of harmony) with himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, bringing them into unity with himself by the blood of his cross. Prior to this moment, all of creation was separate in its state of being (a lower order of being) to the creator, the highest order of being, called ‘uncreated Being’. That consciousness mindset of separation was there, as far as humanity was concerned, in latent form, from the beginning of the creation of humanity. This conscious mindset of separation was waiting to be triggered by disobedience to the will of God, and that disobedience caused mankind to go his own way and miss the mark of going the way of God – and that is sin. This is known as the law of sin and death in humanity. The disobedience caused guilt and shame and separation, the death blow to relationship from us to God, but not from God to us. It was on our part, but God remained faithful. And now Jesus, who had done the work on the earth to overcome this law of sin and death through perfect obedience and perfect relationship with his Father had made a new way open for humanity to walk in God’s ways in the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2). Now that our creator Jesus has joined himself to his creation in humanity we can rise above this mindset of lostness and separation called the law of sin and death. The Bible says that the whole creation is groaning for this glory to be fully manifested and that we groan within ourselves also for its complete fulfillment which will be at the end time resurrection. Romans 8:23 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth (the bringing forth of a New Creation) until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

The time came for them to leave and Jesus led them on a triumphant upward journey, to their new home, his home. The entire company was escorted by Michael and Gabriel and the hosts of angels around them, as they ascended ever upwards until they reached the earth, from where they, and Jesus most recently, had come – from the grave to the sky. There they all stopped for a brief period of time, because there were things for Jesus to do there. The first thing that he had to do was to go to his tomb where his earthly body lay in its shroud. Michael and Gabriel flew before Jesus to the tomb and found the guards there that the temple priests had appointed to stand watch at the tomb. As the angels alighted the ground shook and the massive stone rolled away as a huge burst of lightning hit the place sending the guards reeling headlong to the ground. They leapt up in fright and bolted. Jesus entered his tomb and united himself again to the wounded shell of his body, leaving the headpiece and shroud lying separated from one another in the tomb (John 20:7).

Michael and Gabriel waited inside the tomb while Jesus walked bodily from the temporary resting place, out into the garden. He walked about, recalling vividly the events that had so recently taken place nearby. He remembered his time of kneeling in an agony of prayer, when he accepted his cup of unbearable suffering. A very strange thing was also happening in other parts of Jerusalem. Hundreds of souls who had just accompanied Jesus from below and who had recently died were making the briefest of appearances to their loved ones. Matthew 27:52. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had died were raised up and came out of the tombs after his resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

At that same time some women had prepared oils and spices to anoint Jesus’ body. On their way to the tomb they were discussing the problem of how to move the huge stone that covered the entrance. When they arrived they were astonished to see that it had been moved and the guards were nowhere to be seen. They peered inside the tomb and were met by the majestic appearance of Michael and Gabriel, sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

”Are you looking for Jesus? Gabriel said. He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.”

The women ran to tell the disciples but one of them dropped behind and walked slowly through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. This was Mary Magdalene. And he called her by her name and said,“ It's alright Mary, it's me, it really is.”

When she recognized him she ran towards him but he held up his hand and said, “Please do not hold me because I cannot be touched until I have presented the complete offering of my body and blood to my Father (Leviticus 23:9-16). I will be back with you very soon, so go and tell the others.”

Jesus then regrouped with all those he had set free and the magnificent procession began to move in splendour with its escort of glorious angels, from the grave to the sky. As their ascension took them closer and closer to the throne room a mighty voice could be heard proclaiming his majestic entrance; Psalm 24:7-10 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!

At this command the heavenly music began. The sound of thousands of pipes, the voices of hundreds of harmonies, the deepest of vibrating bass and the ascending range of every stringed instrument created a majestic symphony. The cascading melody and the volumes of resonance pulsed with rhythm, flooding and receding in this moment of triumph. Jesus had come home.

Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he sustains everything in the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… This was the moment, purification for sin had been made and now everything in the Universe was upheld by his power.

Ephesians 1:19-21. how vibrant and powerful is that divine energy that comes from God to us when we simply believe that he is the creator and generator of this supernatural power 20. Which exploded into reality when he raised Jesus from the dead and took him into heaven to sit next to him at his right hand. 21. This heavenly place and position took Jesus as God and man above any other force or realm of authority that can be named, whether on earth or in the heavens…and he has become the center of all consequence and meaning in the universe.

Father led Jesus to a throne in the throne room, and sat him at his right hand, where the most glorious of all crowns was placed upon his head, which still bore the marks of the cruel wreath of thorns from his flogging. All the angels and all those who had come with him on the upward journey beheld their king in his place of honor. Those of the faithful company who had waited throughout time also took their places of honor in their new home and joined in the magnificent celebration. Jesus’ time in heaven for these celebrations was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day. He would now spend forty days on earth as a witness to his resurrection, to seal The Plan of his Father and see it implemented for the rest of time. At the end of those forty days he would return to Heaven, to begin his new mission upon the planet. After that he would wait for ten more days before sending Holy Spirit to begin the new mission of the ‘Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’

Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in Jesus mouth, and Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth. In fifty days after his resurrection (Pentecost pente=fifty), and after Jesus had returned back to heaven Holy Spirit would become the bond between heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God. This would now become the mission of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, in Heaven and on earth.

Within the contradiction of the experience that we call human life, there would exist at one and the same time the cry for, and the resistance to, the oneness of spirit with God for which mankind was created. And within the human pain of this struggle would be found the cry of Holy Spirit wrestling to join the minds and hearts of people to God. This struggle and wrestle would exist throughout time as the Spiritual energy of God’s love that would never cease its activity in the hearts of humanity. It would be the sign of the divine heart exercising its love in the subduing of human nature that it might resonate with the nature of God. Whenever this truth would be embraced by a human heart, that heart would at last find itself at home, around the Family table, where it was destined eternally to be. To be continued.

(Excerpt from ‘The Plan’ – Paul O’Sullivan – Sydney, Australia)

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Pontius Pilate asked the Centurion to command an escort of guards around Jesus to take him to Calvary, or Golgotha, which means The place of the Skull. One of the Centurion's men put the beam on Jesus' bleeding shoulder as they left the yard and went into the crowded street. The already large crowd continued to grow, some of them followers and friends, others bitter enemies, and yet others who were just confused and angry. Jesus staggered and buckled under the weight of the beam but he continued to drag it behind him. It was the custom to write a description of the crime committed on a clay plate and fix it to the top of the cross. Pontius Pilate had written an inscription that read, “THE KING OF THE JEWS” An angry voice called out above the crowd “Who wrote that stupid inscription?” One of the temple priests shouted back “It should say ‘He said he was king of the Jews’” Pilate stepped forward “I wrote that inscription and it stays as it is,”.

A few paces further on Jesus staggered again but this time fell headlong to the ground. Some women rushed forward to help him and the Centurion recognized Mary, as she tried to reach out and help her son and he was touched with compassion for her. He could see blood flowing freely from Jesus now and he knew that he had to keep him on his feet. He must not let Jesus die here on the street. A burly lumbering man who, by the look of his clothing was visiting from some other region, kept close by Jesus as he stumbled forward, and the man balked now and again, as if to reach out and grasp hold of the beam, only to pull back. The Centurion called out to the man. “You, help him. He is too weak to carry that on his own.” The man from Cyrene leapt forward and took the beam. The peace that surged through his heart overcame the strain of the heavy burden, as he strode on into endless time. The trek to Calvary, with its frequent stops took just under an hour from the time the Centurion picked Jesus up in the yard. The process of crucifixion had begun, but it would take many more hours on Calvary for Jesus to die.

John saw Mary walking falteringly up an incline with her companions and he went over and helped her. She saw him coming, and turning, she reached her hand out for him to help her up the slope. Mary asked John to stay close by her, and he assured her that he would. John didn’t know where the others were - he just knew that they were hanging back from the crowd a little, and like them he did not comprehend the fulness of what Jesus actually wanted to achieve - Their beloved leader whom they didn’t fully know how to follow.

As John and Mary reached the flat terrain at the top of Calvary they could hear the dull clink of hammers beating against metal, bone, and timber, mingled with the muffled sound of pain. Two other criminals were already hanging on crosses either side of the hole where Jesus pole was to be fixed, but these two men were tied to their crosses, not nailed. Jesus was finally hoisted up and then the pole was crudely dumped into the hole prepared for it. Some time was spent securing its placement so that it stood erect and stable in the rocky ground. A range of utterances rushed from the mouths of people standing watching when the cross fell into place and when the nails tugged on the body they were pinned into. Some of the sounds were stifled cries of shock and dismay while others were more like startled yells of alarm. But overriding these noises was the swelling chant of taunts and slogans coming from the crowd. Then the priests and the leaders of the Jews joined in the chant. “You were pretty good at saving others, but you can’t even save yourself. If you are the Promised One, our Messiah, then come on down from that cross and prove it to us. Weren’t you going to pull down our temple and rebuild it again in three days? Well why not get yourself down from that cross?”

John winced when he heard Jesus splutter as a soldier tried to push a sponge of sour wine and myrrh into Jesus' mouth. Jesus turned his face aside and refused the swab. Centurion ordered the soldier away and the man joined the other soldiers who were throwing dice to see who was going to keep Jesus’ robe. Dust was spitting itself into peoples' faces on this strangest of days and gusts of wind blew as storm clouds raced faster than usual across the sky, causing a flickering of sunshine and deep shadow. As Jesus hung there the criminals beside him were weakening, groaning in their pain, when one of them turned to Jesus. He had earlier on joined the choir of obscenity, picking up the ugly chant with gusto. He now wanted to have his last few words of bravado heard in this dark prison of life and death he had made for himself. “They're telling you to get yourself down, but how about us? That would be a real miracle, even I would believe you.” He was delighted with the impression this made on the crowd, as they clapped and cheered him, but the man on the other side shouted at him angrily.” “Are you mad? Don't you even fear God? Don't you know who this is? We deserve to be here but he doesn’t. He has never done a wrong thing.” He then turned to Jesus and said. “Lord, will you remember me when you are in your mighty kingdom?” Jesus turned his head and looked at him with love and said, “Today you are coming home with me to Paradise.

John put his arm around Mary's shoulders as she looked on, with tears rolling down her cheeks and her countenance numbed from all expression. John tried to shield Mary from watching but she pulled away from him. She remembered tending his little body when he was a baby, that life that was part of her life. It was then that Jesus looked down at his mother standing next to John. He spoke to her through parched lips. “Mother let him be your son.” His head then turned towards John. Mary looked at John and clung on to his arm. “Son let her be your mother.” John stood with her and watched her son's life draining from him. As they stood shielding their faces from the biting dust that came in bursts, and their eyes from the intermittent dazzle of the sun, they were astonished to see the sun dimmed and the dazzle become a weak gleam. High noon surrendered to a deep darkness which remained for three full hours. Darkness took over that day, in those last hours and put a stop to some things. Shouts of bravado that just moments ago would have roused bold echoes now hung hollow in the still air, and those mockers that had stood close to the action at the foot of the cross now slid back into the crowd.

Lucifer was watching from the headquarters of darkness above, waiting impatiently to hurl darkness at the one who was the sum of all goodness and light upon the earth. His darkness would have to wait its turn in the gloom for three more hours. Even the carrion crows and the ravens hung in the air queuing up to eat, because it was the tradition to leave the bodies hanging on the crosses to rot. Lucifer was exhilarated with the absolute certainty of this impending triumph, and he desperately wanted to close this chapter, shut the book and throw it onto the vast heap of his destruction. His plan was to attack the mind of Jesus, that place in all of humanity which he had chosen as his battleground. He would attempt to wrench all hope from his heart and plunge him into despair, where he assumed that Jesus would have no way back into his hope or his faith, let alone his love.

There were Angels suspended within this pall of sadness that shrouded the desolation below as Heaven waited in eternity and three hours of darkness passed on earth.

Then Lucifer shot himself like a dart into the one that hung between two criminals on a lonely plateau of the place of the Skull. The gigantic spirit of Jesus absorbed the full impact of Satan as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the ages to come assailed his being. Thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. The magnitude of this kind of collision, the sum of all sin hitting the sum of all innocence, shakes all created things.. A swirling sea of fear clawed at him and sought to pull him under but Jesus hoisted his faith above the fear with absolute trust in his Father's love. His great spirit swallowed every vile accusation that Satan hurled at him, and he took them all into himself and locked them safely within his vault of perfect love. He owned it all. He had become the reservoir of all evil in one moment of time, yet he was completely innocent of any one wrong deed. So he rallied his strength once more, but another missile of horror careened into him more powerfully and more deadly than anything before, sweeping over him and submerging him into an impotence and a canceling of all hope. It was black and fathomless, nothingness. It was like annihilation. This was the cup that he told Father he would accept, but he did not know it would be like this. He called out to Father; “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” The source of this horrific thought was not Father God, but darkness had assailed the human heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, of the lineage of David, and in an instant he knew the answer to his question. He had not been forsaken by his Father, but in his humanity he had experienced forsakenness for a moment, so that no living soul from this time on would ever have to feel forsaken by God again because of their human weakness. He was actually living out the prophetic fulfilment of the first verse of Psalm 22 spoken by David. From this first verse and through many of the next nineteen verses David prophesied the agony of Jesus as Son of Man upon the cross, with such utterances as; 7. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” Yet you are he who took me from the womb, you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help. They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots…

And then we see the within the agony of the Son of Man the resurgent faith of the Son of God declaring in the following verses; 19. But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!... Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For he has not despised or forsaken the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. As he hung there he embraced the tragic weakness of humanity and touched the feelings of forsakenness for every human soul throughout all ages. The vast bank of love that filled heaven filled his heart and went out to a beloved humanity. He looked at the mocking faces standing round the cross and he loved them. He sent his voice into a waiting heaven and cried out. “Father forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing.” He had done it. It was finished. The Plan OF SALVATION could now be put into effect.

Jesus had something more to say but his throat felt parched and he wanted to speak with strength. “I'm thirsty,” he croaked out. The Centurion, who was ever there on duty, called the soldier over who had shoved the sponge in Jesus' face earlier. “Give him the wine sponge” he ordered. The soldier jumped to the command and put the sponge up on a pole to Jesus, who could now say loudly and clearly what had to be said in his last moments. “Father into your hands I now offer my Spirit.” Then in one last gasp he shouted loudly for all about him to hear. “It is finished!” Then he died. And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

Who brought about the death of Jesus? Was it Jesus, His Father, The Jews, The Romans, our sin? All of these played very significant parts, and there are Scriptures for each of their roles. But it was finally Jesus;

John 10:15… and I lay down My life for the sheep… 17. Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This command I have received from My Father.” John 12:23 But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed. An earthquake tore a searing gash into the mountainside and people were toppled off their feet. Rocks split apart and the graves and tombs on a nearby hill cracked open. People ran in fear from the place, but they did not know where to go. At that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb. At the very moment that the knife pierced the sacrificial animal the priests were thrown off their feet by the earthquake. The temple shook as huge stones fell from the parapets and the great veil in the temple proper, which separated the place of God’s presence from the rest of the temple was lightning torn from top to bottom. The priests fled in panic as tempest swirled through the city.

Lucifer’s dark mind was being assaulted by a force he had not felt before. It was a desperate feeling of failure and futility. What was going wrong? Jesus was dying with a magnificent hope, not a dark and dreadful despair. The offering of Jesus’ spirit to Father God had released a tangible power into the universe. Lucifer turned to the three dark archons who always accompanied him and shouted. “Let's get out of here, something’s wrong.” He tried to flee back into the darkness but a huge bolt of lightning from the throne room gathered him up and catapulted him downwards. He was traveling face down at a furious speed, and for a split second he thought he saw a burning lake beneath him. It struck him with horror, and he believed he must have imagined it. He was turned on his back and drawn up with the same speed into the darkness above, and then turned back onto his face as he found himself again being plummeted downwards.

The carrion crows were in for a disappointment that day. They were not to know that the next day was the Sabbath, and that it was against temple law for dead bodies to be left hanging on a holy day, so all the criminals had to be dead before sundown and taken off their crosses. The two criminals who were tied to their crosses were still a long way from death so Centurion had his men break their legs that they would die quickly. The Centurion then had the task of ascertaining if Jesus was indeed dead. He called over one of his guards. “Give me a lance,” he commanded. He took the shaft and instructed the guard on how to plunge it into Jesus body, under his heart, where the pericardial sac would have amassed his body fluids if he had expired. Water gushed out and the Centurion knew the day's work was done. He knew that this man was indeed the Son of God.

Pilate had received a report that Jesus was dead but he wanted to confirm the certainty of this from the Centurion whom he knew was there at the time. This was because Pilate had been told that someone from Arimathea, a man called Joseph, was making arrangements for the burial. The Centurion confirmed all this and that also this Joseph was a very wealthy man and wanted Jesus buried in his own tomb that had just been hewn out in a prestigious place in Jerusalem, practically in the temple itself. He told Pilate that some women followers had a shroud prepared and anointing oils and spices.

Pilate asked if Jesus had to be clubbed to death, and the Centurion said no, and explained that they we had to club the others, the ones who were tied, but not Jesus who was nailed, and that it was hardly surprising after the beating he was given. He told Pilate that Jesus died without them breaking one bone of his body. (Psalm 3:20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.) Early the next day Pontius Pilate received a visit from the leaders of the temple priests and lawgivers who were anxious that the followers of Jesus might conspire to take his body from the tomb and try to fabricate a story that he had been resurrected, because they had heard that he had said he would come back to life after three days. They insisted that guards be placed at the tomb to prevent this from happening. Pilate advised them to appoint their own temple guards at the tomb, and they agreed to this.

So now we go from the cross to the grave.

The Prince of Darkness now realized that this man’s body, which had just been destroyed on Calvary had contained no fault or sin, and therefore could no longer be kept captive in this lower world. Jesus again recalled what had been written in the Psalms. You will not let my soul rest in the grave, you will not let your Holy One see destruction. (Psalm 16:10)

As Jesus hung on the cross and offered his spirit to his Father he felt his spirit being lifted up above his body. From there he saw the scene on Calvary and all the people standing around, still looking at his dead body hanging on the cross, and he saw the Centurion call for the lance. He also saw the bolt of lightning and Lucifer being caught in it and hurled downwards. He then began to travel downwards himself, and knew he was on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades (Luke 16:19).

Jesus descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience. They were locked away from eternity till eternity would now come to get them. He would also visit Hades, the grave, the prison of lost hope.

Lucifer had thought that all he had to do was get Jesus killed as a human being and Jesus would then be forever locked away from human life and from God life. When darkness entered our world at the fall of man human beings began to live spiritually separated in their minds from the Life of God (Ephesians 4:17). So Lucifer had laid claim to the ownership of physical death and spiritual separation of every human being. From that time of separation the Prince of darkness, the Prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, held sway over the minds of men (Ephesians 2:2). But death and spiritual separation could not demand payment for something it did not own. It did not own the perfection of the sinless life of the very virtue of God resident in Jesus’ body. The moment Jesus died the cosmic law of sin and death was being overturned to make way for a new cosmic law to soon come into effect, The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This would be the new Law of Life for humanity, joined as one Spirit to God’s Spirit, a New Creation life for a people who would live by faith and not by sight, not in the false self with its mindset of separation but living as the True Self in the Spirit, with a conscious mindset of Oneness with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. To be continued…

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Paul’s mission in life started as a religious mission for the Jewish religion and ended up becoming a spiritual mission for the whole of humanity. As Saul the Jewish Pharisee his mission was one of persecuting Christians wherever he could find them. We see the record of the transformation of the religious mission of Saul into the spiritual mission of Paul in the Book of Acts. It is the account of him going to Damascus one day to get Christians and to haul them back to Jerusalem for imprisonment and punishment and death, when he gets struck down by a blinding flash of light out of the sky. Act 9: 4 When Saul fell to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And Paul said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting (to cause suffering and even death). 6. Astonished and shaken up by what had happened to him he said ‘Lord what do you want me to do?’ The Lord said ‘Get up and go into the city and I will tell you what you have to do.’ 7. The men who had been travelling with him stood by, speechless, because they heard a voice but did not see anyone. 8. Saul then picked himself up off the ground and when he opened his eyes he found he couldn’t see a thing, so his companions had to lead him by the hand into Damascus. 9. He stayed blind for three days, and neither ate nor drank anything the whole time.10. The Lord then spoke to a man called Ananias in a vision, and said ‘Ananias’, and he answered ‘ I am here Lord’. 11. The Lord said ‘Get up and go to Straight Street, to the house of Judas, and ask for a man called Saul, whom you will find praying. 12. Saul has seen you in a vision, coming in to lay hands on him, so that he might get his sight back again.’ 13. Ananias answered,’ Lord I have heard about this man from many people, and how much evil and destruction he has brought upon the Christians in Jerusalem. 14. And he has obtained authority here in Damascus from the chief priests to imprison anyone who calls upon your name. 15. The Lord answered him ‘So do now what I have told you, because he is a chosen vessel of mine, to bear my name before the nations, and before kings, and the children of Israel. 16. I want to show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake. 17. Ananias did as he was told and went into the house and laid hands upon Saul and said ‘ Brother Saul the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on your journey here has sent me to you for you to receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit 18. Straightaway it was as though scales fell from his eyes and he could see. He stood up and became baptized.

Jesus had just asked Paul ‘Why are you causing me suffering?’ Saul did not realise it at the time, but Jesus was telling him that by his persecuting the Christians and causing them such suffering, he was actually causing Jesus to feel the same suffering that they were going through. Whatever feelings of sadness or grief that they went through, he did too, and whatever feelings of joy and peace and love and compassion that Jesus felt, they could touch those feelings too, deep within their hearts, spirit to Spirit. Saul did not yet know or understand this profound and beautiful mystery so Paul’s first question to Jesus was ‘Who are you Lord?’

He then asked Jesus ‘What do you want me to do?’ We read that Paul was given an interesting job description by Ananias – suffering – and to bear the name of Jesus before nations and Kings and the Children of Israel, for their transformation. For the rest of his life Paul would live a journey of the unfolding revelation of who this man was, who as God, felt the deep inner sufferings of all those who called him by his name.

This was to become the purpose and reason for living for Paul, that he might know him, this man Jesus, and to know that this man had suffered for him, and that this man knew him as he truly was, in his deepest feelings. Paul would come to know that this was to become a two-way thing, this fellowship of one another’s sufferings and feelings, both sad and glad, that this bond of loving friendship would grow and last forever, that this was the reason for the creation of and the ongoing existence of all of humanity from, and for, all time. Paul accepted this invitation of a life of shared suffering. Paul shares in his epistles the many things he suffered outwardly in his body in his ministry to the nations, to kings and to Israel, and at a deeper level he shares the things he suffered inwardly. He tells us he was afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken (2Corinthians 4:8). In each of these sufferings, the affliction, the perplexity and the persecution he states that he was able to transcend these things. How was this? It was because he had a Friend with him, the man Jesus Christ, who shared every feeling of vulnerability with him and gave him not only comfort and solidarity, but who, because of their shared life of the Holy Spirit within, Paul received Divine strength. This was the way Paul came to have his question answered of ‘who are you Lord’ and this understanding of ‘who are you Lord’ gives every one of us the answers to all the questions that can be asked.

The first question that God asked anyone in the Bible was ‘Where are you Adam?’ This was because Adam and Eve had listened to the serpent by disobeying God’s commandment about eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they went their own way into darkness and independence and they felt shame and guilt and separation from God. They were told by darkness ‘don’t trust God to deal out what is good for you, instead work out what you want for yourselves that is good for you – more power and freedom and independence, fame and glory, all by yourselves because you really don’t need God any more.

God pursued them into their dark hiding from him and from themselves and said ‘Where are you Adam? Where are you Eve? Where are my friends that used to want to walk with me every day?’ God is still looking for that friendship. God knows where to find us now – He finds us in the spirit to spirit, heart to heart, mind to mind, will with will, friendship with Jesus. They ate from the wrong tree. They had sinned, ‘missed the mark’ (Hamartia – sin). Humanity missed the mark then and still does. Missing the mark was walking away from a trusting and loving friendship with God. The Bible is clear that we all would have done that same thing. but one day the right tree would be offered to us all freely – Jesus, the Tree of Life. Then we would be able to hit the mark, not just the recovering of the walking in the garden like Adam and Eve, but being one with God in Christ, in a perfect friendship. That is the mark, the target, the goal. It always was and always will be. When we miss that mark we bring upon ourselves all of the unnecessary hurt and pain and suffering in this world of ours.

Through Jesus, that tree of life, there would come a New Covenant of grace and mercy and forgiveness. The New Covenant shows us how we can come to know God and have that loving trusting friendship with him forever. Hebrews 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, (This is the heart to heart, mind to mind, will with will, understanding of the core inner values for loving relationships between us and God, and us and one another, like not stealing from one another, or cheating, lying, violence and anger, unfaithfulness and, coveting etc. These things no longer separate us from God but through the Holy Spirit, are transformed into virtues as we trustingly share with him our failures and weaknesses in these areas and know we have forgiveness and mercy – a taker becomes a giver and unfaithful becomes faithful. … they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their unrighteousness (human failings), and I will remember their sins no more.” All of the blessings of the new Covenant come when we aim in the right direction for the right target (and hit the mark).

When Paul wrote to his favorite church, the Philippians, he addressed them as ‘My brothers and sisters whom I love and long for, my joy and crown…’who shared in my needs and my distress above all other churches’ (Phil 4:1,14). Paul’s feelings of love and compassion for these people who were dear to him are on display here, and so is his open hearted vulnerability as he acknowledges their compassion for him in his distress and his needs. This is where lives can touch one another, even from a distance. He goes on to share with them this same heart for togetherness in his quest for knowing Christ and sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings. Philippians 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship (koinonia – partnership, sharing, communion) of His sufferings (pathema, pathos- the deepest feelings, passions of the human heart), becoming like him in the form and pattern of His death and dying, if by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

When Paul said ‘That I might know him, and the fellowship of his suffering, he was not just stoically accepting or looking for suffering, he understood that he was touching the feelings and emotions, of Jesus as both God and as a human being, and that is how he got to know God. Paul continually experienced The Holy Spirit working deeply with his spirit in this mutual understanding or compassion. The word compassion simply means ‘common passions’ or shared feelings and sufferings.

And just like Paul, we get to realize that God is deeply compassionate and profoundly tender and infinitely patient and that he waits for us to bring our feelings to him and to share them with him and to realize that he has felt them himself and understands them. And in the meantime he never stops unfolding to us who he is. We can then find grace to understand more clearly the sufferings of others, to bring the compassion and comfort that brings healing to our souls. That kind of healing grace and love puts God on display in the sharing of our lives together.

When Paul saw that that this bond of loving friendship would grow and last forever, and that this was the reason for the creation of and the ongoing existence of all of humanity from before all time and for all time, he determined to make this his goal in life. As Paul hit the mark in this way he was continually amazed at what God did to display his supernatural power towards him and through him. He learned to accept the sufferings of his outward life, giving thanks in all things as he became continually renewed in his inner life of faith and hope and love. This is the life to which we too are invited to share. This is hitting the mark, and it is with the assurance that we are not alone. We have Jesus with us and we have one another, and for this we give thanks. Amen.

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About 2000 years before Jesus was born God took Abraham and Sarah and chose them to be the parents of a Nation and a culture that he would set aside to reveal himself to, and for about 1500 of those 2000 years that Nation would be trained up in the Jewish religion. God invested his love and wisdom and truth and power and discipline into them. It was as if a nation were kidnapped and put in custody for 2000 years as a test case for humanity under the caring government of a true and just God.

They represented, in their good and bad responses and reactions to God’s investment in them, how the rest of humanity in its entirety would respond and react to a God who would claim them all in due time by joining his life to ours in the person of Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. He wants to reveal himself to all of us and invest his love and wisdom and truth and power and Fatherly discipline in all of us. Humanity in total has always been the object of God’s passionate love, and when the Jewish Christ/Messiah was born into the earth he brought the fulness of God into all of humanity, not just from that time and into the future, but also redemptively all the way back to Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham. After Jesus died on the cross he took the keys of hell and death in his resurrection and opened the gates of Heaven for all those people that existed before Christ’s death. The Scriptures are clear; We have always been in his sights, but unfortunately he is not always in ours. The apostle Paul grew up in the Jewish religion as a true authority in the Way of the Jewish faith. He was then taken by Christ to become the true authority to the rest of humanity in the new Way of the mystery of Christ/Messiah.

Paul understood the profound differences between us all and yet the stark sameness of us all. He speaks to us about himself, who once thought as a child and then grew up to think as one who has come of age. As a very small child we all have the potential to become formed into whatever national and cultural and religious traditions and temperamental thinking it is that grows us.

Is it any wonder that as adults we all contend with each other about what is right and wrong concerning just about any aspect of our adult perceptions of spiritual reality and truth? This is why Paul wrote to the Church in Rome which had Christians from every national and cultural and religious persuasion on earth and was able to say;

Romans 14:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

Let us look at Paul’s journey of experiencing the almost humanly impossible pathway of getting everyone to agree with his understanding of the mystery of being One in Christ. After He had dramatically succeeded in converting non-Jews from all over Asia Minor and Greece into the mystery of Christ in us and us in him, through the Gospel, he determines to go to Jerusalem to persuade the Jews to believe in his revelation of God through Jesus Christ their Messiah.

ACTS CHAPTER 21 – THE ACCOUNT OF LUKE, THE FELLOW TRAVELLER OF PAUL 1.And so, after the tearful good-byes of the Ephesians, we were on a ship and on our way. 3. Cyprus came into view on our left but was soon out of sight as our ship kept on course for Syria, and eventually docked in the port of Tyre, to unload its cargo there. 4 After we located the Christian disciples there, we stayed with them for seven days. They repeatedly told Paul through the Spirit not to set foot in Jerusalem, 10 and after we had been there for a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 He came to us, took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, The Holy Spirit says this: This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will tie up the man whose belt this is, and will hand him over to the Romans and the Greeks. 12 When we heard this, both we and the local people begged him not to go up to Jerusalem. 14 But because he could not be persuaded, we said no more, except, The Lord’s will be done. 17 When we arrived in Jerusalem, our Christian brothers welcomed us gladly. 18 The next day Paul went in with us to see James, and all the apostles were there. 19 When Paul had greeted them, he began to explain in detail what God had done among the non-Jews through his ministry. 20 When they heard this, they praised God, then straightaway said to him, but do you see how many thousands of Jews there are who have believed, and are still all ardent observers of the law? 21 They have been informed about you- that you teach all the Jews now living among the Gentiles to abandon Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs. (They then proceeded to pressure Paul to act like a good Jew and Paul understood this, as he later explains in 1 Corinthians 9:19…I became as a Jew under the Law to the Jews and a Gentile without the Law to the non-Jews not under the Law in order that I may win them to Christ I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some) – Then they speak sternly to Paul … 23 So do what we tell you: We have four men here who have taken a religious vow; 24 take them and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses for them to have all your heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself live in conformity with the law. 27 When the seven days were almost over, some visiting Jews from the province of Asia who had seen him in the temple area stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, 28 shouting, Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our Jewish law, and this holy temple! Furthermore he has brought Greeks into the inner courts of the temple and made this holy place ritually unclean! 31 Violence broke out and while they were attempting to kill him, a report was sent up to the commanding Roman officer of the garrison that all Jerusalem was in uproar and confusion. 32 The commanding officer immediately took soldiers and centurions and ran down to the crowd and rescued Paul. 37 As Paul was being bundled by the soldiers into the barracks, he said in Greek to the commanding officer, May I have a word with you? The officer replied, Do you know Greek? 38 Then you’re not that Egyptian who started a rebellion and led the four thousand men of the Assassins into the wilderness some time ago? 39 Paul answered, no, I am a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city. Please allow me to speak to the Jewish people. 40 When the commanding officer had given him permission, Paul went and stood on the steps and gestured to the people with his hand. They had become silent, and when he addressed them in Hebrew, they kept all the more silent.

CHAPTER 22 1. My Brothers, listen to my defence that I now make to you. 3. I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated with strictness under your teacher Gamaliel according to the law of our ancestors, and was zealous for God just as all of you are today. 4. I persecuted this Way of Christ/Messiah even to the point of death, tying up both men and women and putting them in prison, 5 as both the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me because I received from them letters to the officials in Damascus, to bring Christian prisoners who were there back to Jerusalem to be punished. 6. as I journeyed and came near Damascus at about noon, suddenly a great light from heaven shone around me. 7. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ So I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’… (The story goes on to mention Paul being made blind and the disciple Ananias praying over him and him receiving the Holy Spirit and his sight being returned…) 17. “Now it happened, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance and saw Him, Jesus Messiah saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me.’ So I said, ‘Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on You. And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’ 24. Then He said to me, ‘Depart now, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles (the non-Jews.) And they all listened to him until that was said, and then the Jewish men raised their voices and shouted, Away with this man from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live! 25 When they had bound him and stretched him out for the lash, Paul said to the Roman centurion standing nearby, Is it legal for you to lash a man who is a Roman citizen without a proper trial? 27 So the commanding officer of the Roman garrison was summonsed again, and asked Paul, Tell me, are you a Roman citizen? He replied, ‘Yes I am’. 30. He then brought Paul down and stood him before the Jewish religious council.

CHAPTER 23 Paul looked directly at the council and said, My Brothers, I have lived my life with a clear conscience before God to this day. 2 At that the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to punch him in the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Do you sit there judging me according to the law? In ordering me to be struck you are in violation of the law yourself. 4 Those standing near him said, Do you dare insult Gods high priest? 5 Paul replied, I did not realize, brothers, that he was the high priest, for I know what is written, ‘You must not speak evil about a ruler of your people’ – Sorry! 6 Then when Paul noticed that part of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, he shouted out in the council, Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead! 7 When he said this, an argument began between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided because the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body and things of the Spirit, and the Sadducees did not. 10 When the argument became so great that the Roman commanding officer feared they would tear Paul to pieces, he ordered the detachment to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks for his own safety. 11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said ‘Cheer up Paul, for just as you have testified about me here in Jerusalem, you will likewise testify about me in Rome’.

I can just imagine Paul trying to smile while thanking the Lord and thinking to himself; ’So this is as good as it gets!’ But deep down he knew it was destined to be better than this. Paul knew the greatness and goodness of Christ, and Paul never gave up. That is why Paul was able to write; Galatians 3:28 In Christ's family We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free or even male or female, but we are all the same; we are One in Christ Jesus. No longer Jews or Greeks resolves the perplexity about racism, and no longer slaves or free resolves the perplexity about entitlement and privilege, and no longer male or female even resolves the perplexity about gender equivalence. And all the perceptions and the felt experiences of hurt and misunderstanding about all of these are resolved in our faith consciousness of being One in Christ - all humanity in harmony with God in Christ – the ultimate intention.

These grievous problems are not only a bewildering predicament of our human society throughout history, they are awkward unsolved puzzles that have weakened the church’s testimony of unity and justice and compassion to the world, especially when the Church has been given the very Spirit of wisdom and grace to model the answer everywhere – our Oneness in Christ.

Our humanity seems to be hardwired from an early stage in life to detect unfamiliar differences in people other than what we grew up with, and to be cautious about anything that falls too far away from under our tree, and that is not unusual. But with maturity and wise guidance and an openness of heart and mind we can learn to appreciate the practicality and harmony of the blending of our differences that reveal to us that we are really all very much the same in so many ways and indeed we have need of one another in those differences. Paul wrote that very thing to the church in Corinth. 1Corinthians 12:12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit. God sees and appreciates those differences us in, which he himself planned for us to have, and to be expressed through his Spirit. He sees you just the same as everyone else. We see the differences and contend with each other even in the finest shades of differences of opinions or practice.

Jesus knows each one of us intimately, Spirit to spirit, human to human. He understands the unique potential and aspirations we each have, and the misunderstandings and the hurts we have all suffered, and the suffering perhaps that we have caused to others. So to repeat the last part of the Scripture I read before in Paul’s letter to the Romans about us seeing with understanding the enormous diversity the human traditions and personal histories and experiences of us all Romans 14:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently…

A longstanding Caveat of discerning caution from Paul Ephesians 4:13 until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with man-made methods and doctrines so clever they sound like the truth.

This revelation of Oneness together in Christ has to start somewhere. I believe it starts with a revelation from the Holy Spirit for each one of us that God has made us One with himself through Jesus Christ. That has to come first. That truth needs to be grounded in the truth that each of us is deeply loved by Father God, each one loved as much as he loves his Son (John 17… You have loved them Father as you have loved me…). This needs to be reinforced and sustained by the truth that each one of us is accepted fully as we are, along with our race and status and gender and shortcomings and limited understanding, and half formed opinions, and the not at all perfect teaching and formation of our thinking, by our institutionalised doctrines and practice and favourite television preachers. Otherwise we are left with the fact that God sees us as One in Christ and we see one another as outsiders, the way Peter saw the Gentile Centurion Cornelius, and was reluctant to even enter the man’s house let alone present the Gospel to him. The Holy Spirit did the rest in very quick time (Acts 10).

I have seen some grand moves of the Spirit in my time, and my notion of the next move is that Holy Spirit would rain down and soften our hearts by his love, and give us ears to hear one another and eyes to see one another and hearts that feel for one another. This flood of grace from Heaven could melt our hearts and bestow upon us a humble innocence that heals our souls. And then we might just get to take that healing power into a broken world.

This makes me feel like a little dot in a big picture and that’s okay, as long as Jesus is the big picture, because that makes a little dot feel big enough to be part of anything Jesus wants it to do.

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POLITICS AND GOD’S GOVERNMENT

The Book of Isaiah is a story is of a people who are meant to live in hope, turning to God, waiting for God, and being surprised by God’s goodness to them. After Solomon, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were divided. There were 20 kings of Israel in the north and not one of them did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and of the 20 kings of Judah in the south, only eight attempted to do what was right, and King Uzziah was in the top five of these. The Bible says of him; “Uzziah set himself to seek God … and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.” (2Chronicles 26:5)

Isaiah begins to speak a message of warning and encouragement after King Uzziah dies (in Isaiah chapter 5), because when the King died God’s people turned away from trusting in God. Isaiah’s constant message of turning back to having hope in God all comes to a focus in Isaiah’s words of warning for their presumptuous attitude and desire for political power and control.

Isaiah 30:9 a people who lie, A people unwilling to listen to anything God tells them. They tell their spiritual leaders, "Don't bother us with irrelevancies." They tell their preachers, "Don't waste our time on spiritual impracticalities. Tell us what makes us feel better. Don't bore us with obsolete religion. That stuff means nothing to us. Quit hounding us with The Holy One of Israel."

Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel, because of your rejecting me so that you trust in a headstrong dictator and rely on him, therefore, may this guilt be for you like a bulge in a high wall which suddenly breaks up and collapses. It shall break up like a clay vessel being smashed (That dictator was Pharaoh – worldly power)

Those words were said to God's people during a time when they had become tired of waiting for God to do something, and God was waiting for them to demonstrate that they trusted him. Israel and Judah’s kings had been playing politics for generations, siding with different nations against other rival nations. At this time God’s people were putting their trust in the worldly powers of Egypt and Assyria and playing them off against one another. But none of the nations could help God’s people or provide safety for them as they were only interested in using Israel to strengthen themselves against their enemies, and Israel had taken on a political role among the nations instead of taking on their role as God's spiritual representative, his servants, to exercise his Government in the world. They had rejected his government and authority over them. They had demanded that their spiritual leaders and prophets exercised political power instead of exercising God’s Government.

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulders…. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end,

The Bible says the Government will be upon his shoulders, not the politics. Government and politics are two different things. Politics is exercised by people in a state or nation, no matter what happens to be the lawfully recognized form of Government of the day – one governance, much politics, and God in the midst. Politics Comes from the Greek word Polis which means the State and its citizens. Politics describes the strategic conflict between competing power bases within the states or nations – it is mostly people power, not God power. These political agencies and influence include the political parties, the media (all kinds in that zoo), special interest groups and lobby groups. We take the politics on our shoulders, and we are all involved in some way because we are the people, the citizens, but the Government is always upon his shoulders – God is in charge of history. When we personally are under the Governance of God – The Lordship of Christ, we can bring that into the political arena, whether it is the media or lobby groups, in a God Governance way. God gives his people a voice.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Psalm 75:6 For promotion comes neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south. But God is the Judge: He puts down one and sets up another.

Government means the recognised management of authority and responsibility for justice, law and order, and the care and well-being of the citizens within a state or nation. We bring ourselves under the Government and authority of God’s Word. If obedience to that authority is at odds with the recognized local authority we obey God but accept the legal consequences of the local authority. as Peter and John did when they preached the gospel in Jerusalem. Act 4:18 So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Acts 12.3. This account tells the story of Peter and James being arrested by Herod who was an agent of Roman Governance (Caesar), for preaching the Gospel. Herod put James to death, and the people applauded him, so he arrested Peter, however God needed Peter out of prison so he sent an angel to release him. James and Peter did not organise a political protest, they took the governmental consequences and we see the two ends of the spectrum of their eventual end – death for James and miraculous liberty for Peter. The Government is upon God’s shoulders.

We saw the warnings of God to his people in the previous Scriptures in Isaiah 30:9 where he rebuked them for playing politics amongst the nations, and the threat of sending the Assyrians from the north to bring judgement upon them unless they gave up their independence and turned back to trusting in him.

In the following verses of Isaiah 30 we see the desire of God’s heart of purpose of blessing for obedience for Israel, but a warning for disobedience;

Isaiah 30:15 For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel “In returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust and confidence in me shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling…

1. You've said, 'Nothing doing! We'll rush off on horseback!' And God says to you ‘You'll rush off, all right! Just not far enough! And You've said, 'We'll ride off on fast horses!' 17. And God says ‘Do you think your pursuers ride old nags? Think again: A thousand of you will scatter before one attacker. Before a mere five you'll all run off. There'll be nothing left of you—a flagpole on a hill with no flag, a signpost on a roadside with the sign torn off."

But then comes the encouragement of God’s faithfulness to us. (Israel/Church)

18.' The lord waits to do good to you. He is almighty in power and is kindhearted towards you in your weakness. He is a God of true justice and right order in everything He does. If you wait for Him - with Him waiting for you - great things will happen to you as my people.'

Verses 15 and 18 contain two of the clearest expressions of Isaiah’s message that God had been calling upon Israel/Judah since the days of King Uzziah.

It was now turn around time…

He called for a willingness on the nation's part to turn inward to its faith and to rest on God's grace and promises, but Israel were putting their trust in political power instead of in God. It would require quietness in the midst of turmoil and trust that God would control the great forces that were devastating the nations. That would be a courage or daring of a very different kind to their political strategies. The church today cannot trust in politicians to save them either, but we can trust in God to save politicians. The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders for this very reason.

1 Timothy 2:2 Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can live godly lives, in the way our Savior God wants us to live. 4. He wants not only us but everyone saved, I mean everyone, to get to know the truth… 8. Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray—not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. (Not weaponizing God’s name politically – the Third Commandment)

The final blessing in verse 18 is dedicated to those who are willing to listen and who wait; Vs.18.' The lord waits to do good to you. He is almighty in power and is kindhearted towards you in your weakness. He is a God of true justice and right order in everything He does. If you wait for Him - with Him waiting for you - great things will happen to you as my people.'

He repeats to them that He will do good to them. He acknowledges that He has allowed them to go through tough times of disorder, adversity and suffering, and that He has even used it all for his purposes, but that now it is time for rest and peace to come to them, and that when they cry out to Him he will hear and act.

God had to wait till his people had come to that place of honestly admitting that their efforts and their wayward leaders and prophets had not brought them the freedom and safety and happiness they thought it would. They didn’t get the results they expected. This is something that we all have to learn- the hard way- That God arranges history, not us – the Government is upon his shoulders. He actually waits for us! So what is He waiting for? He's waiting for us to wait for Him! So why don't we wait? Well, just like them - we feel we can't just sit around and do nothing - we have to think of something to do.

God certainly wants us to do the best that we can, and to be agents of godly change, taking on our role as God's spiritual representatives, his servants to the world. He is waiting for us as Church wherever and however it exists, to wait for him and on him, for our eyes to be opened to the opportunities that he places us in right in the midst of our day to day lives – family, friends, work, sport and recreation and the creative arts, health care and compassionate counselling, media, education, wherever he is setting us up to bring his wisdom and faith and love into any situation. His blessing and his power waits to be demonstrated. So pray for rulers and all who govern.

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A LIVING HOPE 

1Corinthians 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide (remain, continue eternally), these three; but the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these is love – beginning with God’s love for us, because it causes the faith and the hope to exist. God’s love is the beginning and end of all things. That is the source of the hope that we can live in at all times. That is the reality of a living hope.

Everybody needs some kind of hope Everybody on the planet goes through difficult circumstances and situations of uncertainty and danger and loss, and some people make it through better than others. Those who do best in coming through these experiences are those who have clung on to some kind of hope. 

So where do people generally find this regular kind of hope?  The answer is they find something or someone, perhaps even themselves, to believe in, and our natural skills and experience can give us hope or confidence, for a while at least. And in this world there are many random things on offer to believe in and it can seem like a guessing game because the certainty of a person’s hope depends upon the reliability and credibility of what they believe in, and nothing in this world is certain, or lasts forever. There are also superstitious and religious teachings that Paul cautions the Church about, to not be ‘tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of teaching, by human cunning, or devices {the word for that is kubeia = rolling the dice – what are your chances with this one?}… Ephesians 4:13) Some new method on the internet maybe, about how to get God to answer your prayer – These things just lead to disappointment, and there’s too much of that. I believe that the need that God desires to meet in each of us, is to be drawn closer to him - rather than just for a sincere cause - no matter how righteous it may seem to that person. (We will get to prayer later) 

A certain hope However for a Christian, life cannot be a random guessing game. Our hope is based on our faith in God’s loving goodness toward us.   Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the basis (hypostasis – basis – that which undergirds something and causes it to stand) of things hoped for, the assurance of unseen things (things=pragma – activity {of God}). So; Faith is the basis of hoping – the assurance of the unseen activity of God. 

God’s love is for you – All the time Your faith is for God - and it blesses him (Hebrews 11:6) Your hope blesses you – because you can now live a life knowing that someone is personally thinking about you continually, working life out for you far better than you can for yourself. That is a living hope that lasts forever.

Hope is something we cannot live without, and we need the certainty of real hope as the anchor to our soul – hope that lasts, and strengthens our soul.  Hebrews 6:18 That we might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place of his presence behind the veil, where Jesus the forerunner has entered for us.

What is the veil and how does that relate to a sure and steadfast anchor of hope? That veil hung in the temple in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, and it signified the separation between the people and the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant. Behind that veil was the most holy place, and only the High Priest could enter into that presence once a year on the Day of Atonement. When Jesus died on the cross that veil was torn from top to bottom and the earth shook, and the rocks upon the mountains round about were split. This was an act of God from Heaven telling us that Jesus was the forerunner for us in entering though the torn veil, and breaking down the separation between God and man from that time on – Through his love, forgiveness and mercy, through Jesus our living hope. Jesus lived each day on earth and went through by that veil because it had no hold over him and created no separation for him, even though he was tempted in all things as with us. He was the first of the New Creation.

That veil is called ‘the flesh’ in the Bible  Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, and let us resolutely affirm the declaration of our hope without hesitation, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. 

However that veil for us today is the mindset of the separated-self, called ‘the flesh’ in the Bible. The flesh can generally be described as our humanity in the form of its basic instincts, good and bad, or the ’old man’ or ‘old nature’ that started with Adam when he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and experienced separation from God. Jesus came ‘in the flesh’ but he lived ’in the Spirit’ and experienced no separation from his Father. Our flesh, our veil, stands between us and the presence of God until we go through by faith into what Jesus did, in making us partakers of his divine nature through his death and resurrection and sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The separated-self mindset (the flesh) is a negative and distorted self-consciousness that has found ways to cope with all of the things we struggle with in life. There are the struggles of the past – the disappointment and loss, failures and errors. And there are the uncertainties of the future – the anxiety, perplexity, and danger. Our assurance of faith that we are now a new creation in Christ and the unfailing hope in God’s love and good will for us gets us through that veil of separation and into the living presence of God, where all things become new. When we go through the veil of negative self-consciousness in this way, we experience the positive God-consciousness of faith hope and love in our soul. 

How do we push through the veil? The first thing we need to do is to reflect upon the love that God has for us. God’s love for us is not a passive love, it is the activity of his goodwill towards us at all times. Our attentive reflection brings his love into the central focus of the present moment of what is happening. It shifts all the past disappointment and loss out of the way and puts them out of mind. It moves the uncertain future and anxiety out of the way and puts them out of mind. It leaves us only with the reality of the love of God for us – a love that is eternally creative and powerful and purposeful for us  Psalm139:17 How precious are your thoughts to me O God!  This is always the starting point. The consciousness of God’s love for us then generates the faith and the hope.

Our prayers It is from this place of faith with the peace of God ruling in our hearts that we bring our prayers and petitions into God’s presence with a real faith in his love and faithfulness to us. We trust his love to attend to our needs and the needs of others according to his good will for all of us. Real hope and real faith operate through the love of God.

Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two mentions two prophetic fulfillments of Old Testament Scripture. The first was from the prophecy of Joel, that wrapped the whole world up in the love of God because the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon ALL flesh, which means that humanity is now ‘In Christ’, not just ‘In Adam’. The second was from Psalm 16 that wrapped the whole world up in a living hope like David had, who was able to dwell in the presence of God because of the hope of God’s love in his heart. Psalm 16:7 My heart instructs me in the night seasons. I see the LORD always before my face, for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my speech was glad; Moreover my soul also will rest in hope. You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.’

Pentecost was the first great move of God’s Spirit coming to humanity and making history in the Earth, causing us to become a New Creation. There have been many outpourings of the Holy Spirit since, and I pray that this new and certain hope in the love of God for us is going to be the essence of the next move of God’s Spirit in the earth. This is something that will soften people’ hearts so that their souls will be rescued from the false hopes and disappointments. This will bring a sure and certain hope in God’s healing love to us, Spirit soul and body.

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Commandment Two

Paul OSullivan and Scott Kardash uncreated.podbean.com

Is idolatry a rare occurrence these days or does it abound prolifically in today’s world? Do idols have supernatural power? Does everyone have a self image? How does a person develop a self image? What does it mean that God is a jealous God?

Exodus 20:4 `You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, The Lord your God am a jealous God For Israel the golden calf was a confused concept of what Israel thought to be God Himself. It was a substantial thing made of wood and gold plated because they had to relate to something tangible that they could make themselves. Their concept was shaped by their past experience.

Our working model self image is an outcome of what is reflected back to us by others throughout our life - of -who -we -are, which has a mixture of either helpful and loving feedback or harmful and negative feedback. This working model of a self image is incomplete and distorted however it is perceived. Its perception of itself is flawed. It is always looking in a mirror at itself and doesn’t know who it is seeing.

We can be tempted to make a better self image for ourselves by having a better position in life, by way of a more prestigious job or status of some kind, and life can become an endless pursuit for this kind of self-worth

The truth is we have been created in God’s image to become the unique person we were created to be. To find that we have to go on a journey of trust in God to reveal to us our special giftings and abilities as well as our shortcomings

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JUSTICE AND MERCY 

Micah 6:8 ‘He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?’

The prophet Micah had a burden for justice to be seen amongst God’s people Israel. In chapter three Micah opposes two groups in Jerusalem, the spiritual and the secular authorities. First, he opposes some of the other prophets, because they were misleading the people and unjustly using their position and power for their own advantage. He said the prophets ‘lead my people astray’ (Micah 3:5). The second group against which Micah speaks are the political leaders and rulers in Jerusalem ‘because they eat the flesh of my people’, that is, financial extortion and oppressive control over the people. In all these passages it is clear that what motivates Micah is concern for this unjust use of power against his own people. JUSTICE Jesus also had a burden to see God’s justice amongst his own people, Israel, and like Micah, Jesus confronted the religious political power base of his day, the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus told them they were ignoring the most important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23).  The Bible tells us that when he was threatened and insulted he did not threaten and insult back again but committed himself humbly into the hands of his Father, who judges righteously on our behalf – He settles the score – His way in his time. (1Peter 2:23). Jesus didn’t have to fight against injustice because he knew where to find true justice – it comes when you put things into God’s hands. That is why Jesus talked about turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you – all those Scriptures that annoy everyone. They’re especially reinforced in the new Testament (Matthew 5:39, Romans 12:19)

This is not the way that we in our entire human history have ever organized our system of Justice, which follows the simple reward and punishment model that we see everywhere. The Scriptures that talk about that in the New Testament are about the need for law and order in society, honouring the king, obeying the laws of the land, being subject to magistrates. This is because they have the authority under God to protect all of us by punishing the evil doers and approving of those who do good, so that we can live an ordered peaceful life ... (Romans 13, 1Peter 2.14). That common justice ultimately belongs to God. God even said in the Old Testament that the consequences of peoples’ evil deeds will catch up with them in due time because justice ultimately belongs to God. Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them because vengeance is Mine, and recompense. (Deuteronomy 32:25)

But Jesus made it clear that the Law was not only about judgment of good and evil but the most important aspects of the law were justice, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23). That is because God didn’t create us just to devise a judgment system to deal with good and evil and maybe enjoy a relationship with us on the way. He created us to enjoy a loving relationship with him as his children and to unfold the amazing mystery of his mercy and forgiveness to deal with the problem of good and evil on the way. 

Jesus didn’t have to fight evil with power and violence. He absorbed the full sum of all of the evil of humanity on the cross, using another kind of power called forgiveness. His last words were ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.’ His death became our freedom from judgment and his resurrection became the powerful way of living a transformed life. Jesus was showing us the nature of the Father towards his children – forgiveness and mercy.

Forgiveness and mercy are not commonplace in our social dealings with each other, because unlike God, we have made forgiveness and mercy conditional upon who deserves it. We have learned that it is more efficient to negotiate our own reward and punishment systems of justice.  This includes the blaming and shaming and judgement of people against one another that is seen everywhere today. It is a payback power play that invites the same payback treatment in return. It never transforms anyone, it just creates a cycle of further resentment and payback.

Many people align themselves with a group ideology or set of policies and they will blame and shame another group with a different ideology. God sees these people as individuals that he is mercifully and patiently trying to redeem and transform. If we don’t see these people as individuals in this way we can be blinded to the darkness within our own individual souls that God is also mercifully and patiently trying to redeem and transform.

There are of course wonderful examples all around us of individuals showing compassion and mercy for other people who are weak and vulnerable no matter what group they belong to. This is a startling reminder that humanity is created in the image of God, so that capacity for compassion is very much a reality within every heart. And it is an observable fact that comforting and caring for someone who is suffering softens the human heart that is doing the caring. 

An even greater dimension of that kind of comfort and mercy is ours when we we receive an understanding and revelation of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter who lives within us. The Holy Spirit shows us the compassion that Jesus had for all of for us and that we can have for one another, thoughts of kindness and mercy.

The prophet Zechariah spoke to all of us through a prophecy to Israel about the heart of kindness and compassion we would receive when we would finally come to understand the Father’s heart of  grief that he felt when he sent his only Son to die on the cross for us. Holy Spirit has carried that mercy and compassion from the Father to the Son and to us for one another.

Zechariah 12:10 And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and  mercy, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child… and from that mourning will flow ‘a spirit of kindness and prayer’ and ‘a fountain of living waters will flow out from them’ (Zechariah 13:1; 14:8).”

WALKING HUMBLY WITH OUR GOD. Just as Jesus showed a humble trust in committing all justice into the hands of his father against the threats and insults of his enemies, we see how King David also walked humbly with his God. There is a story of King David which shows that he had an understanding of the balance between his status as a king, and humility. In 2Samuel 16:5 David is accosted by an aggressive person called Shimei. This man cursed David as he rode along, and threw stones at him, from a hillside opposite him, accusing him of being a man of blood, a murderer. David's companions, who were riding on his right and on his left hand side, wanted to take off Shimei's head, saying - 'why should this dead dog curse the king?'. But David showed a Godly restraint and humility and replied to his men along the lines of: 'If God has sent this man to tell me what I'm really like, then I cannot destroy him for that, and on the other hand, if God has not sent him, then God will deal with the matter and even repay me good for this cursing of me today.' 

When we can have faith that humbly accepts that God is at work to show himself just and faithful and merciful on our behalf we find his grace to surrender the power of justice and judgment into his hands. We are mistaken to think that God could never be that generous with his amazing grace to actually bring perfect justice to bear for us. It takes a certain kind of humility to accept it, and not make it all about us and what we deserve. If we can receive that grace we can then live in peace and bring peace into our world.

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FIRST COMMANDMENT – Putting God First.

Paul O’Sullivan – Go to http://uncreated.podbean.com/ to view complete series

Is it logical to say that if people would have obeyed the First Commandment there would be no need for any other Commandments?

This commandment is actually the be-all and end-all of the commandments. It tells us that we should look to no other person or thing than God Himself for our ultimate meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

Are the Ten Commandments actually a Biblical course in character growth?

the first commandment begins a logical sequence of challenges to faith and obedience that produce a process of spiritual and emotional growth to maturity. The next commandment, which deals with the making of images, only becomes relevant when a person has not remained dependent upon God as the source and means and end of his life, and so builds for himself or looks to some other source, or finds some other means of strength that becomes a 'god' to him.

How does emotional pain and abuse affect a person’s ability to accept support and comfort?

God had to release Israel from bondage before He could give them the commandments. He knew that the bondage had caused bitterness in their souls by reason of their cruel taskmasters in Egypt, and His loving response to them was one of compassion.

God told Moses to tell them of His promises for them, but they were unable to respond. God's most formidable task was to convince them of His love for them, let alone transform them.

Why do people resist putting God first in their lives?

We can only be transformed when we see the need for that change of heart and mind, and many people do not realise how much they need to be changed, and so they resist it.

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THE KINGDOM WITHIN Paul OSullivan spiritcode.podbean.com When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the temple guards, he was then tried by the Jewish High Priest and the council of elders and then handed over to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor of Judea. When Pilate questioned Jesus about being King of the Jews he asked him why he had been tried by his own people and why they had brought him to a Roman Governor for trial. He asked Jesus what he had done, and why was he claiming he was their king. Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting for me and not allowing me to even be put on trial. But my kingdom is not of this world.”- John 18:36

Jesus did not ever urge his disciples to protest against Roman authority or consider any hostility towards Roman rule, even though that is what they expected would happen, They were all convinced that the Kingdom would be an outward Kingdom ruled over by Jesus, and that the Roman Empire would be overthrown and that they would rule alongside of him with great power and authority. But Jesus did not come to try and change the outward kingdom in which his disciples lived; he came to establish the kingdom that would live within them.

In Matthew 20:20 There was an occasion when Jesus was teaching his disciples principles of the Kingdom of Heaven when the mother of James and John, a woman well known for her religious zeal came before him to ask a request of him. She knelt down, facing Jesus, with her two sons standing behind her. She said she had a favour to ask of him concerning her two sons. She asked if Jesus would give them a special place in his kingdom, to be seated next to him, one on his right hand and one on his left. There was a stunned silence and then irate sounds and heated words were hurled at the two sons from the rest of the disciples, and then even at one another, as it became clear that they were all coveting some special position themselves. Jesus knew he had a difficult situation on his hands, so he addressed the mother first. “You don’t know what you are asking for. It cannot be done that way.” Then Jesus addressed the men. He told them that what they were all wanting for themselves was not even his to give. He said that Father had given them all to him, and that Father alone gives place and position as he sees fit. He said that if they were to follow him then they must follow all the way. He told them that he had a cup of pain and sorrow that he must drink, and an ordeal of suffering that he must go through. He asked them if they were able to share that with him, instead of some position of importance that they thought they deserved. They were all sobered by the rebuke, and surprised at the meanness that they had witnessed in their own hearts. Jesus went on to say that they could not behave like the Roman rulers, or their own religious leaders, who use their authority and positions of power to dominate others to get what they want out of them. He told them that true authority was serving one another, not competing with one another, and that he had been sent to serve, not to be served, and to lay down his life for others. That day they learned a lot about God and a lot about themselves. And it was obvious that they had been secretly coveting and competing for a special place in the order of this new earthly Kingdom that would be happening any time soon.

Jesus had to correct their tendency towards the power plays of political activism, some of them more than others. Peter would not be slow in lopping off the ear of the temple guard when Jesus was being arrested on the night he was betrayed by Judas, and Judas was the most zealous political activist of all who was bitterly disappointed when he realised that that Jesus had planned no imminent earthly Kingdom. James and John were also quite happy to hurl some fire from Heaven against the rejection shown to them once by the Samaritans, their political and religious opponents (Luke 9:54).

Many Christians today have a similar Christian activist mindset to that of those disciples. Jesus had to correct his disciples and prepare their hearts and minds to live in the power of a Kingdom within them rather than seek power in an earthy kingdom around them.

The power of the Kingdom of God within is the power of God’s love, and it is that love that created us and that sent Jesus to die for us, and it is that love that was sent at Pentecost into our hearts through The Holy Spirit who releases that same love out to others. When we live that love out in caring and practical ways is what it means to be a witness to Christ. A witness is not just saying words. It is in being an influence for godliness wherever we are. The word for witness in the original Greek is ‘martus’ which also means martyr, so we need to have realistic expectations about how people will respond to that influence. Our godly influence will either be accepted and honoured or we will be penalised and intimidated.

That love is what Paul encouraged Timothy to focus on so that he would not fear the intimidation of those of corrupt power and influence in the church in Ephesus who were resisting his godly ways and rejecting his faithful teaching of the Gospel. 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind. Paul lived in that love that expresses the Kingdom power and that renews our minds. Paul started the church in Ephesus and appointed Timothy to care for the church after he left, and he had written to that church about the powerful work of the love of God in us through the Holy Spirit praying that they would ‘know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that they may be filled with all the fullness of God, giving honour to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to that power at work within us. Paul also wrote that ‘the love of God compelled him’ (existemi). It held him together and ordered his life (2Corinthians 5:14).

The kingdom theme in the New Testament is part of the great cosmic battle of light over darkness, and everything in God’s plan is now according to a new order that flows from the life of God in the person of the Holy Spirit, who is changing us into the likeness of Jesus. That new order of the Kingdom love of God is influencing everything in our world around us and many will respond and embrace the message of the love and light of God, but many will reject it and continue in darkness despite ongoing global shakings and afflictions (Revelation 9:21 tells us that many harden their hearts and will not repent).

So we cannot achieve a perfected earthly kingdom on this earth in this age where every kind of corrupted kingdom authority will fight to maintain its flawed and limited power base. It cannot be perfected until Jesus returns from Heaven to rule and reign, and puts down all rebellion in the earth and in the heavens. And at that time it will come to pass; ‘that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9). We finally take our place with him in that new Kingdom. Until that time of his return, we live in an age where every kingdom on earth is being shaken. The only Kingdom that cannot be shaken is the Kingdom of God that dwells within us. We read that in Hebrews 12:28 … This means that all of creation will be shaken, so that only unshakable things will remain. Since we have received a Kingdom that can never be shaken, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe.

It is good for us to live in this this reality in our soul, our mind and emotions and will. It is the reality of the inner kingdom that can never be overcome, but finally overcomes all others. Our life and peace and refuge are found within our faith and trust in God’s love, as we identify as his bride being made ready for him, in purity of heart and faithfulness to his love and protective covering over us. Where he is we are, and where he goes, we go.

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YIELDED PRAYER

Our acceptance and patience and trust in God as our Father in times of adversity is the measure of our growth in faith. We do not grow in faith if we think faith is getting what we want simply because we pray for it and think it should happen.

God allows contrary and painful circumstances to confront us. These things challenge our trust and faith in him as a good and loving Father who wants the best for us. Our response needs to be to believe that his motive is to do us good and bring us closer to his heart.

The examples of faith in the lives of the gallery of heroes from chapter 11 such as Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Moses reveal how they accepted and embraced the circumstances of their lives, believing that God was at work in the unseen world, doing his will through them, and they left the results to God.

Hebrews 11:39 And all of these, though they won divine approval by means of their faith, did not receive the fulfillment of what was promised, Hebrews 12:1. The faith lives of this gallery of heroes are set before us as a witness of what is meant by yielded faith. We can now throw off the attitude of being weighed down by our problems, and the individual failures and flaws of our human nature. Let us now run the race set before us with a well-timed and measured pace

Paul writes to the Hebrew Christians who are going through times of affliction and persecution because of their faith and he encourages them to not give up.

Even when our circumstances are adverse and difficult, our inner life of faith can fill our hearts with hope because it is surrendered to God’s will and is not fixed on demanding a self-determined desire of the soul. Our hope is in the fact that God is working out his perfect plan. He doesn’t need a perfect prayer, just a yielded prayer and a joyful expectation. We always end up enjoying his answers to our prayers rather than our own idea of what we wanted.

Hebrews 12:2. We can keep Jesus in our sights, the one who initiates and completes our faith life. He kept in his sights the joy and happiness that awaited him as he set himself to persevere the ordeal of the cross. He shrugged off the scorn that people threw at him, and finally took his place at the right hand of the throne of God 3. Just think of that barrage of self-centered and evil attitudes that he had opposing him. Compare this to what you are going through before you decide to give up because it is all too hard. 4. You have not yet had to battle against evil to the extent that your life-blood is drained out of your body. 11. This kind of faith challenge does not seems like fun and games at the time; it is painful. But when you go through the pain of it you do end up with the gain of it. You end up experiencing a peaceful harmony with God and with your own soul.

Even when the circumstances are favourable, we can let our faith life down because we can negatively perceive them as not favourable enough. That kind of ungrateful mindset can be destructive and disappointing to our soul and foster a negative perception of God, which is a wrong realty that says that God doesn’t really love me, that I’m a victim, or life is unfair. The Bible tells us to give God thanks in ALL things because that brings us into alignment with his true heart of goodness toward us. We then experience a release of his transforming power toward us, and as we change, our world changes around us, because God is at work releasing his supernatural power that reorders everything in our world into a better place.

So is there a model of the perfectly yielded prayer in the scriptures that can guide us in this? YES!

Romans 8:25 …The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought (which is a necessary thing), but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He (Jesus) who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He (Jesus, see vs.30) makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together, (fitting in to a plan) for good to those who love God, to those who are the called (invited) to be aligned with His plan and purpose

This verse tells us that we don’t know what we should pray for. It does not say we don’t know how to pray – we know that – it is praying to the Father through Jesus (in his name). It is the what that counts as that is necessary for the prayer to be perfect as being in God’s will. We may hardly ever know in our own mind and soul what God’s will truly is, except we sincerely know what we would like it to be.

So the Holy Spirit helps us in this weakness and limitation of ours and he makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Why would Holy Spirt be groaning? Is he struggling about something going on within us? Yes he is. This very chapter eight in Romans has a great deal to say about the inner struggle of God’s Spirit within each of us as to what is of the soul and what is of the Spirit. Romans 8:5 For they that are exercising their soulish self (flesh) the flesh are mindful of the things of the soulish self; but they that are exercised in their spiritual being are mindful of the things of the Spirit. It is at his point that Jesus enters the picture and takes the prayer baton handed to him by Holy Spirit… . Now He (Jesus) who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He (Jesus, see vs.30) makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Why would Jesus know the mind of the Spirit who is struggling within us concerning this very thing? Because this is how Jesus operated in partnership with Holy Spirit in his prayer life on earth, as he would only do what his Father directed him to do. Jesus knows the mind of the spirit and he also knows our human soulish mind o he identifies with us in his humanity, having been tempted in all things like us but without sin. That is why he cried out to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane ‘Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless let not my will but yours be done.’ So we can be assured that this second phase of intercession for us in our prayer, which comes through Jesus will be answered according to father’s plan and purpose for us (Romans 8:34 Jesus is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us…) It is then that our world changes around us, because God is at work releasing his supernatural power that reorders everything in our world into a better place. Vs.28 And we know that all things work together, (fitting in to a plan) for good to those who love God, to those who are the called (invited) to be aligned with His plan and purpose

There are five things that you will find good to bring to remembrance at the start of each day.

1. Remember that Jesus is still the same. He never change, even if yesterday everything around you changed.
2. Remember that his love for you is an everlasting love, and the reason you exist is because he wants to share his love with you today. That is his greatest desire.
3. Remember that he can do all things, and that nothing is impossible for him, who created you, and the Universe, just for you.
4. Remember that he only wants the best for you, and he will surprise you with his goodness.
5. Tell him you will not worry or be anxious today, for there is no need for that – he will make life work out for you if you let him.

And here are the Scriptures for those things

1. Hebrews 13:8 ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.’ (TLB)
2. Jeremiah 31:3 ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you to me.’ (NKJ)
3. Luke 18:27 ‘“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”(NKJ)
4. Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the thoughts I have towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’ (NKJ)
5. Philippians 4:6 ‘Don’t worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a grateful heart (Good News Bible)

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CITIZENS OF HEAVEN When Paul wrote to the church in Philippi they had been living under Roman rule for a couple of generations. They had a proud cultural and philosophical heritage and a fierce sense of citizenship going back to the first Greek culture in Athens five centuries before which was the first ever democracy, and all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote. They had a proud cultural and philosophical heritage that aspired for excellence in diverse areas of life. The two prominent ideological philosophies were the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics cared about virtuous behaviour and living according to principles of discipline, while Epicureans were connoisseurs of good food and good wine and cared about avoiding pain and seeking comfort and pleasure.

Philippi was the most significant Roman colony in Europe, the gateway city that joined Europe to the Middle East, and it was the first European city where Paul preached the gospel and established a church. It was also the place where in March 44bc the senators of Rome under Brutus and Cassius assassinated Julius Caesar to try and preserve the Roman Republic. They killed Caesar but the new idea of a republic also died and went nowhere. It has been called ‘The suicide of a Republic’. Paul was a Greek scholar and understood their philosophy and culture and their politics and he was mindful of the importance of the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship, being himself a Roman citizen. He had heard that dissension had come amongst the church at Philippi and he writes to them to appeal to their better selves to live at one with each other. So when he writes to them he focusses on the whole citizenship issue and powerfully points them to their ultimate Citizenship, their newly won Citizenship of Heaven.

Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, Our way of life reflects the atmosphere of heaven, where we live in constant hope and expectation of the supernatural redeeming work of Jesus, 21. Who will finally take our weak mortality and change it to be like his mighty immortality, using the power that only he has, to subdue all things to himself. Philippians 4: 8. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy — meditate on these things

‘These things’ that we are asked to meditate upon are down to earth qualities of intentional behavioural and attitudinal conduct, within the capacity of every human being made in God’s image. Paul knew that the Philippians esteemed these qualities as a mark of being an exemplary Greek Citizen also, so he was urging them to acknowledge and appreciate the potential of these qualities in one another, and be inspired to want to live them for themselves, not just as part of their Greek heritage but as spiritually transformed Citizens of Heaven. In his letter to them Paul encourages the Philippians to consider one another in this way. He urges two of them who were his helpers in his ministry when he was there to patch up their differences and start to agree with each other. In another place he says; if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. (Philippians 2:2)

Meditate – logizomai – focus the mind – allow the meaning of each one of these words means not just a definition of the word but the personal meaning us, to be imprinted on our soul.

True/truth – alethes - The basic reality that defines you. Certain limiting life conditions may be true circumstantially but they are not the real truth of the inward person of the heart (Joni Erikson free and not trapped). There can also be distorted negative personal thoughts about ourselves and our circumstances through things that other people have emotionally put upon us in our vulnerability, that are not the truth of who we are, and these can create in our soul a painful and severely limited sense of who we really are. But the truth of who we are in Christ is there in our spiritual DNA – we just have to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the reality of that true self that abides in the Father’s unconditional love.

Noble - semnos – character. Noble – That is our character, he highest values that characterize us and what we aspire to – yes that’s me, that is what I set for myself. Meditate on these things, what do we give ourselves to. And that will draw us into being the best we hope to be. Nobility is true stature, inward stature. The virtue of this kind of nobility is that in itself it is a far more effective influence of what you would like people to hear and understand and perhaps agree with you on. It’s better than just pushing strong opinions in an argument till you win an argument. People in politics who want more power and influence often scrap and fight and disparage one another, but nobility outclasses this kind of one-upmanship and ranks number one as the most persuasive and convincing influence of all.

Just - dikaios – Balanced like the scales of justice – justice and mercy. It results in what is upright and fair. Those who practice this are counted as being trustworthy to judge fairly, not putting a spin on things for one’s own advantage because of some kind of prejudice, and not fearing injustice, but knowing that it is God who finally justifies. Jesus knew where true justice was, in the hands of his Father 1 Peter 2.23 He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of a just God.

Pure - hagnos- innocent motivation. What awakens a child like wonder and even awe of good things the beauty of the creation around us. The Bible says ‘blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God…’ This awakens an innocence and purity in us that cleanses our souls. It brings a childlike acceptance of life that doesn’t mind not knowing everything, or not being in control of everything. It is not naiveite but a simplicity that is not dominated by other peoples’ opinions as strong as they might be. PSALM 131 God, I'm not trying to rule the roost, I don't want to be king of the mountain. I haven't meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans. I've kept my feet on the ground, I've cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother's arms. Wait Israel, for God. We can live like that as a way of being, expecting God’s goodness to bless an innocent motivation from a pure heart.

Lovely (prosphiles)– To move towards and friendship. What creates a friendly atmosphere. What brings about a warm attachment, a sense of an attractive atmosphere that draws someone closer rather than make them feel unwelcome. It could be the kind of words that uo say or the tone of voice or a kindly look upon the face. What draws someone into the circle of your life in an appropriate and fitting way.

Good report – euphemos (eu=good, phemos=shines forth) - What is positive and worth sharing – the good report. The can-do attitude.

A good report and a bad report can have the same facts but a different can-do attitude. The facts of the matter concerning Israel’s decision to not enter the promised land at Kadesh Barnea when they were a few weeks into their exodus from Egypt, and God told them to enter in resulted in a bad report and a good report, a can’t do and a can do attitude. Moses sent twelve spies in to give the people a report of the land they all agreed that it was a delightful and magnificent looking countryside, there was an abundant produce of grapes and fruit that they all carried back and showed the others, and that the land flowed with milk and honey and one more thing, there were giants in the land. Ten of the spies emphasized the giants in the land and said “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land. But Joshua and Caleb said “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” Think of how you come across and meditate upon this. Take up the challenge of what God would have you do that is facing you. Through him you can do all those things. It is then really God that does the work, and that is a work of faith.

Virtue – aretes. The good decisions that create good character - Good values create good decisions and these make good habits and these create good character. We can have good intentions but to have virtue we have to follow through and make good decisions. Find the wisdom, have the intention, find the motivation then follow through with decisive action – that is virtue and that too is a work of faith.

Praiseworthy – epainos - Anything worthy of God’s commendation, not just impressive in the eyes of man. We are doing these good things for God – It is through and for him and of him. It is God that then says well done good and faithful servant!

These are what you meditate upon. That is what heals the emotional pain that the soul suffers, especially when the moral and ethical climate of attitudes and behavior in society degenerates into people disparaging and belittling each other and putting one another down and fomenting resentment and revenge in hurtful angry speech. This seems to be the age in which we are live right now. Have these virtues disappeared in our society? No they are there, sown into our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit, even breathed into humanity from the beginning, but it just means that they have to be sought for from within ourselves

Change does not come quickly – There must be patient steady effort. This transformation means sitting with the pain of life in God’s presence and allowing him to subdue the negative self consciousness and hopelessness, and awaken our positive God consciousness and be made whole. That becomes our reality.

Meditation on these things allows a transformation into our truer self as God pouring himself into our spiritual povertywith his richness of being. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’.

We can learn to make our own hearts a place of peace and integrity. We can let our own pain and suffering be healed and become part of his healing wherever we are. The Bible shows us how to do this. It is nothing new, but it cannot be neglected. What we can do is give up all hope of a better past, that’s gone, and take hold of a new hope that opens up a better future.

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After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who understand what it means to live a life shared with God. Gold speaks to us of the nature of God. Frankincense speaks to us of prayer and worship. Myrrh speaks to us of the suffering of grief and loss.

For Jesus these were not just fancy Christmas presents to be put away as keepsakes and forgotten about. Rather, these were for Jesus, symbols of the realities of an ever present consciousness of sharing his life with an ever-present God every level of experience. We will take the gifts one by one and apply them to how to live an every-day life in the conscious awareness of sharing life with God.

GOLD  Gold speaks to us of the nature of God on display in a human life. Why? In the hierarchy of the attributes of grandeur and majesty and radiance of material things in the earth gold is ranked number one. In the same hierarchy of attributes of a heavenly being worthy of worship and awe and respect there is the idea of a god. The bible says that people who make idols makes them out of gold and silver (Psalm 115) with gold as the first choice. When the people of Israel came out of slavery in Egypt and began their trek though the wilderness they came to Mount Sinai and Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God and was up there for six weeks, a very long time. They became impatient and worried that if Moses had gone then maybe his God was gone too. They wanted a god they could visibly relate to so they made a golden calf, their chief idol deity of Egypt and began to worship it. It was a wooden calf plated with gold. For that they were severely judged and punished by God. Then some weeks later God commanded Moses to make a tabernacle, a tent of worship where he people would gather daily and worship and make sacrifices. The central item of worship was the ark of the Covenant to represent the presence of the living God that was with them. 

Exodus 25:10 … Make an ark of acacia wood… and overlay it with pure gold, inside and out…

This ark travelled with them on their wilderness journey and was carried on the shoulders the priests with poles, made of acacia wood and overlaid with gold. This was not a wooden calf covered with gold, it was a piece of acacia wood, a gnarled and twisted species of timber, difficult to work, and overlaid with pure gold. The acacia wood represents the distorted nature of humanity, grown out of the soil, and overlaid with the glorious nature of God, speaking of their defects and failings mercifully forgiven and covered with the perfect and unflawed nature of God – God with us. He gave them something to see with their own eyes, but this was a shadow of things to come, and prophetically signifies Jesus, who took our distorted human nature becoming one of us and yet displaying the radiant and glorious nature of God. He became the fulfillment of what Israel had been seeing as the ark for all that time. This remained a mystery until Jesus came.

It says in Colossians 2:17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.  And Jesus said ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’. Jesus knew this gift of gold as an ongoing reality in his life. This also is prophetic of what God had in store for us, after Jesus died and rose again and sent the Holy Spirit to join us as one Spirit with him. So in the New Testament we are the twisted acacia wood on the outside and Jesus is the pure gold that dwells within us, so how do we get to be the gold on the outside, as Jesus was In the New Testament? The Holy Spirit draws that radiant nature of God through us so that as we live closer and closer with God in your heart that nature will start to shine on the outside, even though we still have that old dead acacia wood there but we choose to let Jesus do the living within us and the shining through us… we live by faith (It is no longer I that live…).  The gold appears through the trials of our faith. God is looking at us as the finished product, and we are the potential of what we can be, and what we shall be, through our growth in faith 1Peter 1:7 The tested genuineness of your faith is more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire… (also 1Peter 4:12 – the fiery trials)

INCENSE - Prayer  We see in the Bible that Incense speaks of worship and prayer. Psalm 141.1 O Lord, I call upon you. Accept my prayer as incense offered to you… Frankincense has a sweet perfumed aroma and speaks to us of sweet prayer ascending from a true heart and pleasant to God.  Revelation 8:4 The smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of God’s people ascended up to God from the altar. Incense was an offering, a sacrifice to God, so prayer is actually an act of giving towards God rather than an act of taking from him. True prayer to God comes from a surrendered heart. What we offer as a sacrifice is our yielded will to God – not my will but your will be done.

This is a sweet aroma to God. God wants us to bring our prayer requests to him, with thanksgiving but with a yielded heart. This releases the faith in us that knows with assurance that God is powerfully working all things together for his good will to be done and gratefully received in our lives.  MYRRH –

The presence of God restoring lost hope because of grief and loss in our lives.  Myrrh is symbolic of death and of grief and of loss. We see in the Scripture that Jesus was offered myrrh mixed with wine when he was on the cross but he refused to drink it.  Mark 15:23 And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh… He knew he was going to die and that myrrh was symbolic of his death but for the joy that was set before him he endured the suffering of the cross, so he rejected the symbol of death and his heart of faith and hope was his resurrection. Accepting the reality of suffering and loss has meaning for our life when we know that God suffers with us and his presence through the Holy Spirit restores lost hope that comes through our grief and loss. We don’t always get back the very things that we have lost. What we have really lost is hope – we cannot live without hope.. The grief that all the followers and friends and family of Jesus suffered when he died on the cross was almost inconsolable. But that inconsolable grief turned into the most resounding of victorious joy at his resurrection. So the greatest human tragedy became the greatest human and divine celebration. The greatest paradox of all time.

Somewhere in between his unparalleled experience of grief and death and his exuberant joy and resurrection is the story of our life of griefs and sorrows and lost hope that can become the story of the restoration of new life and new hope and a new future. Jesus was buried, and his body anointed with myrrh (John 19), and included in his burial was all of our sin and failure and fear, all of our griefs and loss. He suffered and died and was buried for all of our disappointments and resentments and bitterness, all of our doom and gloom and depression. He wants to teach us how to bury these things and as we let them go that becomes his precious gift of myrrh to our lives. The continual burial of all of these things in our lives waits for the continual command of ‘arise’ and go forward in a new and risen life.  This is our powerful pathway of growth designed by God to give us a future and a hope that cannot be extinguished.

God wants to grow us as well as to console us.

Isaiah 61:3 To console those who mourn; To give us a crown of beauty upon our heads instead of ashes upon our heads, the oil of joy for mourning, and the spirit of praise for the spirit of heaviness…

He wants us to appreciate and to share with him in the treasure of all these precious gifts, the gold, the incense and the myrrh.

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Relationship is the key value in the whole theme of the commandments, because God wants us to be fulfilled in life through relationships, both with Himself, and with one another. We find then that the first four commandments deal with our relationship with God, and that the next six deal with our relationships with one another. That is why the New Covenant had a promise that the law would be written in our hearts by The Holy Spirit, a person, who can indwell us and make alive the spirit of the law, and the standards of God's wisdom for our relationships. This can now be done on the powerful basis of love and grace, instead of legalism.

God has designed the Commandments as a sequence of steps where success in any one commandment leads to an understanding of the next. Obedience to the first commandment gives understanding of the second commandment, and in the same way, failure in say, the sixth commandment means a lack of understanding in the fifth. The fifth commandment says ‘Honour your father and your mother’, and the sixth says ‘You shall not kill’. So how are these related?

If we look at the personal relationships Involved, we see that commandment number five, honouring our parents, speaks about the very first relationship we experience as human beings, a relationships with authority. In this relationship we are being taught, in a very natural way, to trust another person for the needs in our life. In a perfect world, with perfect people this trust would grow and grow, but we don't live in a perfect world. Have you ever seen children get angry? That is because they’re frustrated at not getting what they want, even from parents that they trust and that loves them, and so we all fail in the fifth Commandment.

The reason that this relates to the sixth commandment is found in the statement that Jesus made in the sermon on the mount, when He said 'In the law it says thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you, be not angry with your brother without cause. Put in simple terms - anger kills. Anger kills relationships and it kills people. So by experiencing frustrations in not getting our own way as children in an imperfect world under the authority of imperfect parents, we carry this mistrust and independence into our lateral relationships and display the anger, moodiness or aggression, which kill relationships, and so we fail in the sixth Commandment.

Here we see another Divine design. That is, that the growth pattern of the ten commandments is not like going up a stairway, it is a circular spiral that takes us all the way around to commandment number ten, and then leads us right onto commandment number one again. In a positive sense, that upward path is an upward spiral, and spiritual growth is taking place. This growth will always take place if a person is willing to honestly admit where they are failing and go back one step and correct the response to the previous commandment, and then leap forward in revelation and faith. And of course the downward path is in fact a downward spira.l

The evidence of the circular nature of the progression of the commandments is seen graphically when we get to commandment number ten and find that the next progression is to commandment number one. This can be explained by the fact that the nature of the problem in commandment number ten, which is the commandment against covetousness, is that of idolatry and discontent. Those persons who are not content with what they have, live their lives out of coveting what someone else has, and so, the source of their fulfilment is what others have. This is a form of idolatry and is called such in the Bible (Colossians. 3:5). And there we have the circle completed. The answer to this covetousness and idolatry of course, is found in commandment number one, where we acknowledge God alone as our fulfilment. This is why commandment number ten, and commandment number two (on either side of commandment number one), both deal with idolatry.

At any point of failure at some level of experience, we need to go back to the previous commandment, and let The Holy Spirit reveal truth to us in this way.. This also affords a most effective chart of diagnosis for the serious counsellor who wants to see a life transformed by the truth and power of The Holy Spirit

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AN ERA OF PEACE A prophet called Micah made an amazing prophecy that foretold the birthplace of Jesus over seven hundred years before Jesus was born. This verse also tells us that he would be our peace.

Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the conflict and disorder to remain until she who is to give birth has her son. And he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord… and he will be greatly honoured throughout the world. He will be our Peace.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated. The prescribed time for dedication and purification was forty days according to Jewish Law. A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King, which was Simeon’s lifelong prayer, forever waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, The Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and began praising God. ‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29) On that day this prophetic man Simeon took his place in entering the era of peace that had come upon all of humanity.

Joseph and Mary just stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus. Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her son Jesus; ‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. This momentous prophesy declares Jesus as the one who stands at the centre of the scales of every life. This challenges us to either respond to or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his life, death and resurrection. This truth is the challenge that provokes opposition and denial in the human heart, where all of our inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart into account.

Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind. But who wants it?

A woman named Anna was also there in the Temple that day, a prophetess of the Jewish tribe of Asher, and was eighty four years old. She lived a cloistered life in the Temple, dwelling there night and day, worshiping God in praying and often fasting. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and The Spirit also bore witness to her that this was the promised Saviour and that the Messiah had finally arrived. She began thanking God and proclaiming this truth to everyone in Jerusalem. She too had now entered that era of peace that had come upon the world. The word for peace in the bible is Eirene. This word actually means ‘oneness’ which in its fullest sense means oneness and harmony with God. That is why we say ‘He is our peace’

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East. Babylon was the first civilization in the East to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets as far back as 700 BC. Planets in those times were also referred to as stars and sometimes as wandering stars. There were many such Magi, astrologers and astronomers who served the kings of Babylon. These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls, and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, where there was a cross assimilation of both cultures, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel They would have also studied any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. These Wise Men would have been observing the charts of the heavens and calculated the timing of a convergence of two great planets that would have shone as an exceedingly bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky, and which would have shone at its brightest as that great light that shone at the birth of Jesus.

They had followed this great light to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem. They were asking about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts, and their presence in the city and the line of questioning and discussion they were having with the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod.

Herod had been appointed by Caesar Augustus to oversee several local regions, including the region of Jerusalem. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he worked with the proconsuls and the military leadership. He had become extremely agitated about the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he was threatened by it. He heard that Israel had a record in their Scriptures of such an event heralding the birth of a Messiah or a new king to rule over them. It was rumoured that this special child would begin a new kingdom in the earth, and Herod did not quite know what this meant, but he didn’t want that sort of competition. He had his own dynasty to create.

Driven by his urgency to know all that he could about this child, he called for a conference with the priests and leaders and pressed them concerning the predicted time and place of this special birth. Certain scribes and teachers knew from the Scriptures the Bethlehem region of the child’s birth, as we first read in Micah 5:2, and that a great star would appear at that time. Armed with this knowledge Herod secretly summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them the whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king. Afterwards he congratulated himself. They were no match for his cunning and had promised to report back to him. All he needed to know was where to send his garrison of soldiers so that the child could be killed.

After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky, and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who understand what it means to live a life shared with God. Gold speaks to us of the nature of God on display in a human life. Frankincense speaks to us of sweet prayer ascending from a true heart. Myrrh speaks to us of accepting the necessary reality of suffering, and its meaning for our life, because without that there is no spiritual growth.

That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him, so Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night.

Then Herod, when he realized that he had been out-manoeuvred by the wise men, became infuriated and he commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah; ‘In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss. (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18)

Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1).

However when Joseph learned that the son of Herod, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. So they came and settled in a city called Nazareth, and yet another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family for many years, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult.

During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year. The feast was always very crowded and lasted for seven full days and there was a lot of activity and celebration of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt, and they travelled to and from the feast in a caravan of hundreds of people, pitching tents and camping on the journey. When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was mingling with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, and when they couldn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only after three days of searching and making inquiries that they finally found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers of the Law, discussing deep questions with them and astounding everyone with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. However his parents were perplexed, not knowing what to think, and his mother asked him in her distress why he had done that to them. Mary told him that she and his father had been frantic, searching for him everywhere.

Jesus asked them why they felt they had to search for him and why they didn’t realize that he would be here in his Father’s house, sharing in his Father’s work. But they didn't understand what he meant. It could have appeared to be insubordination, which was puzzling and very uncharacteristic of him, to not respect his sonship in their family.

But Jesus had not betrayed his sonship. In fact he had had no intention of dishonouring either of his sonships, either to his earthly family or his heavenly Father. Here, however, in the encounter with his distressed parents, this maturing child was wisely coming to grips with the complexity of the relationship between his identity as Son of God and as a son in the family of Joseph. He did this for us too, as with everything else he did for us, knowing we would grapple with this earthly and heavenly fatherhood quandary in our own lives, and would graciously come be made whole in God the Father’s unconditional love. So he went home with them and was subject to them. Jesus continued to grow in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and was admired and respected by all the people in that place.

Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life. This had never happened before, this new form of life, God and man together, a new creation. Because of this new creation a new connection between man and God would be possible. Through what this man would accomplish in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he would experience with his Heavenly Father would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family.

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GOD WITH US The appointed time finally came to heal the earth. It was twisted and torn and it could not heal itself. There were many religions apart from Judaism, and all the rituals, the pomp and ceremony, had only allowed that gap between God and man to remain. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. The Divine Being, Jesus God, was to make his transition from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from pure Spirit existence to human flesh existence.

Father had always planned that a new species was to be born into the earth. He had planned for his son to begin this new species of being, a Spirit species, a Spiritual species in the earth. Humanity has been known as ‘Homo Sapiens’ (Mankind +knowledge) – one who has knowledge and knows. But I believe that this new species that came into being at this time is ‘homo Divinicus’ (Mankind +God) – God with us. Now was the time for Jesus to go to earth as The Father’s Son, to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its sorrow and its lost hope, and to lift human life into a place of shared friendship with The Three in One. Jesus knew and had agreed before the beginning of time that this was to be the plan. He knew that it was the only way for the love of God to be known by humanity. Jesus knew that he would become the expression of that love in the most perfect way. Holy Spirit was to become a partner with Jesus in the completion of this glorious plan. It was not just Jesus God who would inhabit the earth, but Holy Spirit would also become a person of this planet by sharing every moment of life with Jesus, and in that way, he too would experience human life.

Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and He had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of their love and goodness and truth. He sent an angel to announce this amazing news to Mary. Gabriel entered the place where Mary slept. She awoke startled and afraid and sat upright, staring at the heavenly being. Gabriel motioned her to be still and stood quietly in her small room. Mary was told she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God the Son' and that she was to call him Jesus. She answered back that it was impossible and that she never been with a man. Gabriel told her that the birth of this Child will not have anything to do with Joseph, her betrothed, and that The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin. He told her that this was the will of Father God, and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, that they had chosen her to be the mother of this special child who would be the liberator of all mankind. Mary humbly surrendered her being to the magnificent will of God.

Meanwhile Gabriel visited Joseph in a dream also and told him that Mary had been chosen by God to give birth to a son, who would be ‘God The Son’. This was to be a divine work of The Holy Spirit who would cause a holy life to ignite within her being, and that this was the fulfilment of a prophecy in the Scriptures with which Joseph was familiar ‘A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14). Joseph awoke suddenly, and faith filled his heart, and he declared loudly to himself that there would be no shame, and that Mary would become his wife immediately - they would have this wonderful child and he would care for him as his earthly father.

In due course Gabriel put it into the heart of Caesar Augustus to do a census and register every person in the known world. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the conflict and chaos until she who is to give birth has her son. And he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord… and he will be greatly honoured throughout the world. He will be our Peace. Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven hundred year old prophesy of his birthplace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary and the journey was tiresome for Mary and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season. They did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place near where the animals slept and fed. He saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could. A mother sweated through her mother pain and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father. Loving mother hands washed the newborn child in a water trough. On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” Their singing of this new creation was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation – ‘When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4,7,8). When the singing had stopped and the angels had left they were guided to the place where this extraordinary and singular event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. This is how we get to ‘know God’. Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. 1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true. This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need, in any given situation and at any given time. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith. Christmas waits to be truly celebrated. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

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PROPHETIC PAUSE We are looking at the message of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. It is a prophecy about preparing the way for Messiah to come to his Temple people, and turning their hearts back to God as their loving Father. It is a message for us in these days, as his people, his Temple.

Malachi was the last prophet to speak in the Old Testament. He was speaking to the people who had returned from their seventy year exile in Babylon. They went into bondage in Babylon after their temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the king of Babylon. When they came back to Jerusalem they spent quite a few years rebuilding the temple under Zerubbabel their priestly ruler. Then twelve years after they had completed the temple Malachi prophesied that The Messiah would return to their temple. Here is the key verse;

Malachi 3:1 I will send my messenger to prepare the way before me. And the Lord (Messiah) whom you seek will come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight is coming, says the Lord. (So this verse mentions two messengers…)

You would have thought that now was the time for something wonderful to happen, but nothing wonderful happened – everything stopped and came to a standstill until the time came for God to act. Malachi was actually prophesying about the time of the appearance of John the Baptist, four hundred years later, the messenger (the Elijah) who would proclaim the ministry of Jesus the Messiah, who was the messenger of the New Covenant (mentioned above). During that silence of four hundred years after the final word from Malachi, there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. This four hundred year time of silence is called a prophetic pause. There was another four hundred years of silence, another prophetic pause, at the time of Israel being taken in bondage as slaves in Egypt, after the time that Abraham was told his descendants would inherit the Promised land, the whole land of Canaan. For four hundred years there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God, until the Word of God came to Moses, to let my people go’.

a prophetic pause like this speaks of preparing the way of The Lord in a time of uncertainty and ambiguity, with an expectation for something new and different to happen – a waiting time.

Background of the birth of John the Baptist (The next thing to happen) After the four hundred years of silence from the book of Malachi it was time for John the Baptist to be born and to become the messenger (Elijah) that Malachi was talking about, who would prepare the way of the Lord, Jesus the Messiah! Zacharias the priest was told that his wife Elizabeth was going to have a child. the Angel Gabriel appeared to him to give him the news that Elizabeth was going to give birth. The Angel said; …Your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John… and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God… he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah (John the Baptist), to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the Lord; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. These words are from Luke 1:13-16, but they are taken straight out of the prophecy of Malachi and are in fact from the last words in the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament. But Elizabeth was barren and was well past child bearing age, being 60 years old, and Zacharias did not believe what the Angel told him, so Gabriel said to Zacharias; ‘you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time’ So here we have a double emphasis upon the significance of the time of silence when Zacharias is struck dumb, a prophetic pause of a time of further preparation before the time to speak would come. The words of the Angel were a repeat of the message of Malachi but the unveiling of them was nothing like anyone expected (For John to be born and live in the wilderness and prophesy of Jesus), and many rejected or ignored the truth of the message. I believe we are in a global prophetic pause in this current time of global catastrophe. But the prophetic pause is always full of the purpose of God. I believe that the prophetic pause we are experiencing today holds the promise of worldwide Holy Spirit activity and the unveiling of that will be like nothing anyone would have expected.

We can tend to expect God to speak to his people the same way time after time or to do his sovereign acts the same way time after time. But God will not be locked into our expectations or predictions as to how he will speak or what he will do. There have been many moves of the Holy Spirit on the earth and they all came with different settings and circumstances and activities from the preceding moves of God. Some were times of weeping and repentance, some were times of healing and miracles, some were times of teaching and revelation, and some were times of refreshing and release.

An example of God varying his method and manner of speaking to a prophet was after Elijah had seen God do a mighty miracle of bringing rain upon the drought that God had brought upon the nation of Israel. Elijah challenged the bad king Ahab to have his prophets of Baal and Ashtaroth to erect altars on the top of Mt. Carmel and ask their gods to end the drought, while Elijah would set up his altar to Yahweh and call upon him - It was a competition. The prophets of Baal did all kinds of weird rituals but nothing happened. Then it was Elijah’s turn and when he called upon God there was lightning and thunder and a deluge of rain. Elijah won, God won, and a nation repented and turned back to God. Ahab’s wife Jezebel vowed to kill Elijah, so Elijah ran and hid in a cave waiting for God to speak to him again for direction. He heard mighty thunder and saw lightning flash and thought that this was God speaking to him, but the Bible says that God was not in the storm, and God was not in the lightning like before. He then had to wait and listen for the still small voice to tell him of the new thing that God had planned to do. God did things totally differently from before.

We appear to be living in a time of prophetic pause, a time of silence, a time of uncertainty and ambiguity, waiting for the Word of the Lord to come and bring new direction to God’s people (Is the Church like Zacharias waiting for the time to speak a clear word), perhaps unlike anything we have heard or seen before.

This is a time of reordering God’s people to hear from God. In 1Corinthians 14 Paul speaks about there being many kinds of voices in the world and they are all trying to declare or proclaim something. He also says that if the trumpet (the voice of proclamation) sounds an uncertain or indistinct sound, the people will not know how to go into battle. This means that the people will not be ready, or prepared.

We are in a time when God is preparing us and reordering many things in the earth and in his Church (Malachi said God would first visit his temple, his Church). In the Church we are hearing many earnest and sincere voices proclaiming with great zeal what God might be saying at the moment, and there are different perceptions and opinions and discernments as to what is being proclaimed and predicted, and accountability comes with prophesy and prediction. But just as Zacharias had to wait, and more-so just like Elijah had to wait and hear the Word of the Lord in a new way, as a still small voice after the storm and the lightning, this may be a time when we need to be still and hear and see what Jesus has to say and do, not only through what the Holy Spirit whispers to us personally, but also through what Jesus, the head of the Church, does sovereignly in the earth, and in his church - something perhaps unlike what we have seen before in previous moves of the Holy Spirit. There are many on their knees at this moment calling upon the name of the Lord. Hebrews 1.1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world…

God is preparing the hearts of all those who seek him with true hearts to be fully assured in faith that he alone has authority over all that is happening upon the earth and in the heavens at this time.

There are parallels to the Church in the message of Malachi in this strange time in which we live, in a time of standstill and disorientation. The Church today appears to have all it could need in the form of resources such as churches and worship and leaders and helpers and programs and marketing, but is God calling for something more? I cannot predict what it would be but what I would hope for is the presence of God in our midst, melting our hearts rather than just the presence of all the sincere and impressive human ability and performance and Bible knowledge in our midst, exciting our senses. Is there something deeper that God wants to do for his children From the first verse of the book of Malachi we see that God’s purpose was to assure his people that he still loved them and was keeping his Covenant with them, and the theme of the last verse of the book is also of the love between God as our Father and us as his children. Malachi 4:6 I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives… His preaching will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…

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GETTING YOUR BEARINGS. To be able to go in a direction that will make us sure that we reach the goal or destination we are meant to arrive at in life we need to know the answer to three questions; Who am I? What is happening to me? And What am I meant to do? We need to know who we are so that we can understand what is happening to us, and we need to know what is happening to us so that we can know what we are meant to do.

Who am I? In other words –How do you see yourself? If you weren’t sure you could look in a mirror and see your reflection! You see an image. But to know who we are in our inner self we have to get in touch with the self image we have of ourselves – reflected back to us by the ideas of other people that have shaped us and formed us.… we don’t do self-analysis as child – work out how to maximise our potential for a great future. We take on board what we are told we are – the positive - approved, encouraged, loved unconditionally - or negative - criticised, discouraged or ignored, and we end up with a positive or negative self image, mostly a muddle of both. Some people cope with the negative feedback better than others and hurt feelings and woundedness is experienced by everybody and that can stay with us - BUT God has made provision through The Holy Spirit for us to be healed from all the pain of that harm we do to one another in our lives. The one big and amazing truth that sets us free from that confusion and pain is the understanding of the wonder of what God’s idea is of who we are - created in God’s image and likeness. Genesis 1:26…Let us make man and woman in our own image (selem) and likeness (demut)… Genesis 1:27… And God made man and woman in his own image… The complete plan of God for humanity was to become not just the image, shadow, but to also become the likeness, substance, reality. Three times in the New Testament it is said that the Old testament Law and Commandments were a shadow of the things to come, because the Substance, or reality was of Christ. (Colossians 8, Hebrews 8, Hebrews 10)

In the Old Testament God gave Israel the Law and the Commandments and these things were a shadow of his love and wisdom and goodness and mercy to them that allowed them to pursue and find a knowledge of God and to aspire to live in and as the shadow of the nature of God. Many had a heart to pursue this knowledge of God and many did not. Those that did were blessed and those who did not brought sorrow and grief into their own souls. David saw himself as the apple of God’s eye – a very positive self image from a very merciful and forgiving God. He had that heart after God.

When Jesus came he planted into humanity the greater and even more amazing idea of who we were – not just made in the image of God, but being transformed into the likeness of God. In Jesus, God had joined himself to his own creation in one person, born from above by the Holy Spirit. And we became born of that seed also when Jesus planted himself as that seed into the earth after He died on the cross and rose again. And that seed brought forth us, as the fruit of a new creation upon the earth – not just the image but the likeness of God. 2Cor 5.17 says that; In Christ we are a new creation…and that we are joined in one Spirit with The Lord (1Corinthians 6:17), chosen in him before the foundation of the world, designated beforehand to be placed as sons and daughters in his family through Jesus Christ, (Ephesians 1:4) So that we can say; Galatians 2:20… It is no longer I that live, but Christ is living in me… THAT IS WHO HE SAYS WE ARE!

What is happening to me? There is the good and the bad that happens to us, that this world brings into our natural lives. AND There is an absolute and ultimate good that happens to us as God brings His love into our spiritual lives that transforms us into that person that God created us to be. I am being loved by God. His delight is to love us with all of his heart. Would God want to do anything else, other than to love us as his children? Anything you could think of would have to contain his love, because God is love, and that includes God’s discipline of us as his children, and allowing us to suffer through hurtful and contentious things done to us by others. The Bible says that Jesus had to suffer the contradiction of peoples’ sinful nature against himself. His love and grace is sufficient for us in all these things

That changes our perspective of what is good or bad in all the things that the world brings into our natural lives. We are living in a confused and conflicted global culture in this present time that delights to deal out spiteful and vindictive punishment, person to person, group to group exacting revenge upon each other and some wanting even to cancel out those that do not agree with their ideology. God is using ALL these things to work together for His good – his perfect strategic plan and good will for our lives. John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, But living within the delight of God’s love for us can lift us far above that kind of chaos. We can return love for hate and not fear.

What am I meant to do?

I am simply asked to pass this love on to others.

1John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

What about other things that are required of us to do that are part of living for God and with God in this life, like serving God through serving others, and living a sacrificial life instead of putting oneself first, and being obedient to God’s commands? Obeying his Commandment to love him and to love one another as he has loved us, fulfils all of our obedience to him. All of these things are fulfilled in our living out of a life of faith that works through love. Paul tells us that this is all that really matters. What about Jesus saying that we will be his witnesses in the earth. Being a witness means living a life that has God on display in our lives. That means his love in action in our lives. When Jesus was being questioned by the crowd about who he was l the people who he was he said that he could bear witness of who he was and that he knew where he had come from and where he was going (John 8:14) Jesus had his bearings, and he gives us our bearings, so that we can know who we are, what is happening to us, and what to do in all situations.

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CHRIST OF THE COSMOS I’ve been sharing what is happening on the ground in society these troubled times and also what is happening regarding the spiritual darkness in the heavens. Now I want to talk about the God of the heavens and the earth, the God of the Bible, Christ of the Cosmos.

Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16. For through him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn (prototokos) from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20. and through him to reconcile to himself all things together whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 And you who were once hostile are now being reconciled (re-ordered) into oneness with Him and are made innocent in his eyes if you remain in the faith because of this message which has been proclaimed to all creation.

Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16. For through him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,

Jesus is the Image of the invisible God, the outward manifestation of the unseen nature and essence of God in all love and wisdom and power and beauty. Before Jesus came as a person in that image into the earth, he first of all had to create that earth within a Universe. Jesus is called the Firstborn over all creation. The word for ‘firstborn’ is ‘prototokos’ which means the ‘first time seed bearer’ - the first DNA – The beginning of a new order of being. This means that Uncreated being (Invisible and Unseen Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) introduced created being for the first time (Protos) through Jesus, the Logos – the Seed Word. Created material being began as an explosion of light – let there be light. Everything created by that Word had a destiny, because the Word (Logos) contains within it the design for its perfect completion. This creation is not there yet.

16 … visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities… So Angels were created as beings of spiritual light and then there began a creation of a material Universe Job 38: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Ezek 28:12 You were the perfection of wisdom and beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; your clothing was bejeweled with every precious stone--ruby, topaz, diamond, chrysolite, onyx, jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald--all in beautiful settings of finest gold. They were given to you on the day you were created. I appointed you to be the anointed Guardian Angel. You had access to the holy mountain of God. You walked among the stones of fire. "`You were perfect in all you did from the day you were created until that time when wrong was found in you. Your great wealth filled you with internal turmoil, and you sinned. Therefore, I cast you out of the mountain of God like a common sinner. I destroyed you, O Guardian Angel, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was filled with pride

16b all things were created through him and for him. 17. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. The Universe came into being, through Jesus as the divine agent of creation, and for Jesus as the Lord over it, and this Universe was totally contained in Jesus as the domain of his activity. He is the sustainer of the universe and the unifying principle of its life and form, and that apart from his continuous sustaining activity everything would disintegrate (vs.17 above). This was FOR Jesus so that he could fulfil the plan of the Father to have a family of humanity to share his very being for all eternity. Jesus began his journey into this material creation the moment he said ‘let there be light’. He was made manifest, prophetically proclaimed as Messiah, yet symbolically hidden throughout the Old Testament, as the Rock that gave forth living water in the wilderness, the manna, the Lord of Hosts that greeted Joshua etc. But this symbolic manifestation had to be hidden in that age. 1Corinthians 2:7. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the archons of this aeion understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (See also Luke 24 Emmaus) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as One, were not prompted by any need to become more fulfilled. God as Trinity always was and was always fulfilled in all things in Themselves. We can say that The idea of creation was a divine act of an outpouring of their shared love and inclusion. They wanted a family of human beings, spirit soul and body, made in their image and likeness ‘male and female made He them’.

1. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn (prototokos) from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

Jesus then became the firstborn from the dead – (prototokos) the first-time seed bearer of a new kind of life and being on the earth – the resurrection and the life). Jesus became the giver of new life, a new creation 1Corinthians 15:45 “The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. To give this life to us he had to die. He died willingly, a sacrifice of love, the ultimate expression of love, setting for us a pattern of a sacrificial life and love between us. To do this he to not only live it but to find a way to sow it so that we could live it on any given day. He could then become joined to us, as the head of his body, the church. John 10:17 The Father loves me because I lay down my life voluntarily that I may have it back again. No one can take my life without my consent - For I have the right and power to lay it down when I want to and also the right and power to take it again. For the Father has given me this right. John 12:24 , truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

1. and through him to reconcile to himself all things together whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. This would mean the return of cosmic peace, as it was even from before the beginning.

Jesus has to bring everything in the universe together to be in harmony with him and his perfect relational order (reconciled). No more thorns and thistles that were part of the curse upon the earth from when Adam fell, or earthquakes, tsunamis etc. This all happens all the time, everything collides, the laws of physics of a natural world. But the earth groans under all of this and is waiting for the next age. A new heaven and a new earth. Romans 8:19 For all creation is waiting patiently and hopefully for that future day when God will resurrect his children. For on that day thorns and thistles, sin, death, and decay--the things that overcame the world at God's command--will all disappear, and the world around us will share in the glorious freedom which God's children enjoy.

21 And you who were once hostile are now being reconciles (re-ordered) into oneness with Him and are being made innocent in his eyes if you remain in the faith because of this message which has been proclaimed to all creation. The hostility between God and man was only on our part. Jesus did not have to change any notion of hostility of the Father’s heart towards us. He came to change the hostility in the heart of humanity towards God, and is still doing that through the Holy Spirit. The Father wanted a family and a family home. Jesus built the home and then became the home by being born from above by the Spirit. He was in the Father in him while he lived upon the earth with the Holy Spirit. He then rose from the dead and Holy spirit went with him. He then sent the Holy Spirit to come and be with us. And now the Holy Spirit makes humanity the home for Father Son and Holy Spirit to dwell in (John 14:3,23 – We will come and make our home with him). All of this is for all of humanity but it only has meaning on a day to day basis, here and now, for those to whom this message (which has been proclaimed) is listened to, understood, and taken hold of by faith and lived in with hope. The Holy Spirit now seeks to fashion us into our uniqueness as a person joined to himself as One Spirit, so that we feel at home with Father’s idea of who we are in his eyes from the beginning. So let us turn our eyes upon Jesus – let the things of earth grow strangely dim – in the light of his glory and grace.

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IMAGE MAKERS

How do we become who we are - how do we see ourselves as that person that we think we are. That is an image – that is an idea in our head – where did it come from? A person does not make up an image all by themselves. The image we have of who we are is an already formed idea of what gets reflected back to us through our life that we accept and act out from.

The image of who we are comes originally from God’s idea of who we are, Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…

Then came the devil’s idea – his idea of who we are was fist proclaimed by Satan when he said to Adam and Eve ‘God has told you not to eat of that tree because he knows that when you do you will become like Him and God does not want you to have that experience.’ So they believed him, and rebelled against God and were deceived into believing that it was too tempting to throw that short cut of being like God away. They had accepted the idea of darkness which was the actual image that the devil had of himself who also wanted to be like God and that image was now being imprinted onto them. They accepted the idea of who they were as being somebody separated from God competing with God for their own autonomy as an independent person apart from God.

This idea of being able to fashion their own idea and way of being like God which was a lie was sown into the hearts and minds of humanity and made its permanent imprint upon this world. This became the mindset of the human race that in wanting to be so much like God that they made themselves to be their own God, an then made themselves into that image 1John 5:19 ..whole world lies in darkness…

TOWER OF BABEL

That grew to a point that they were not just individuals who had their own individual idea but there grew upon the earth an entire population of people who had one idea and language and under the leadership of a man, Nimrod, who said let us make a city and build a tower that will reach to heaven, and that became the first collective human idea, an identity of humanity that had enormous power in the earth. The tower of heaven reaching heaven is not only man’s idea of being independent and making himself like God but being able to build the city of God and to create your own utopia, your own heaven on earth. That became the lie that as cultures developed became imprinted upon the people that developed that culture.

God realized that if all of mankind had one idea in common and pursued that into the fulness of its darkness and deception humanity would eventually destroy itself by giving itself to the devil and become the expression of that darkness. To save them God decided to bring confusion into their language to communicate to one another and he scattered them on the face of the earth and they all became different cultures in different places in their behaviour, language morality and values.

So that is three big ideas of the making of the image of humanity upon the earth- God’s idea, the’ devil’s idea and the collective culture’s idea, with spiritual powers of darkness influencing them.

And then there is a fourth idea which is of our own invention and imagination, our voice to ourselves which comes about because of all the different ideas that have had an influence upon us and reflect back to us the image telling us what they want us to be. This is always the way. A person does not begin in their formative years , say from 3 to 7, to sit and analyse what kind of person they are and who they plan to be what they want to pursue as a career and to adopt certain values that they aspire to. It starts with parents who believe what this little person should be like, what they should think and believe and how they should behave and what they should value, and this is different from culture to culture – a self image is being formed. The childhood experience can e positive or negative, helpful or harmful, harsh, provoking the child into reaction ( Ephesians 6:4).As a child grow beyond age 7) A child then also gets influenced by the peer group and decides to form in their mind how they want to behave in that group in order to belong. That group image begins to define them. This goes on into adulthood in the formation of self-image. No matter how radical or weird or extreme that brand of thought and behaviour is. That doesn’t matter because that’s where they feel at home and where they belong. That is their tribe, whether religious, political, cultural or ideological, or weirdly personal. So four image making ideas have come into that life.

BUT there is a way that we can respond to the best idea of who we are - God’s idea, and that is found in the Bible. In the Old Testament we can say for the sake of clarity and brevity that that is reflected in the core values of the ten Commandments which reflect back to a person the picture of God’ wisdom and care for relationships, His wisdom and integrity, so that if people as individuals embrace these core values they will be a community of people that not only survive but they will flourish and be the best kind of community that they can be. In the NT those very same values of love and truth, honesty, productivity in relationships, caring for and honouring one another are imprinted on us by the Holy Spirit. When Jesus died for us and rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit, who lived a human life in and with Jesus he made way for us now to be in that same empowering relationship with the Holy Spirit.

So there are two things happening within every human being today – there is still that instinct to form your own image of who you want to be in the current day world in which you live that is reflecting its values back to you saying ‘this is how you are going to make it in this world. This is what the Bible calls being conformed to this world.

However to summarise so far - God is the primary image maker. In the Old Testament the Commandments were the primary model of the image of God because they reflected the nature of the wisdom and the ways of God. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit works upon our hearts to transform us into the image of Christ. Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, The renewal of the mind takes place when a person accepts the truth of who they were created to be and allows God to do that transforming work.

Then comes the question - What is that world out there?

Just as the Tower of Babel was a community of people with one mind and one language, That tried to build their own heaven, there is in the world today a new progressive collective identity that has a lot of other group identities arrayed within it that is seeking to build its own idea of heaven on earth. They see themselves as an enlightened empowered group of individuals with the freedom to do what they want to do and behave how they want to behave and have want they want to have, and they are being told mostly by one another who they should be what they should think and how they should talk and what they should believe and what rights they should demand in order to be an acceptable member of contemporary new order of society (the internet makes it possible to get all that information in minutes or seconds). This collective identity is based on not having to conform to Biblical and traditional core values and their restraints - and it means fighting for the freedom and autonomy to set up a new set of values, virtues, and entitlements, to be committed to and championed as a social construct – an ideological political system – a new utopia, a repeat of the tower of Babel.

This clashes head on with a conservative traditional value system based on biblical Judao-Christian values – two value systems. But both of these value systems are falling short of producing an expression of an intact and effective ordered human family in these times. Just as Israel in the Old Testament Israel couldn’t obey the Commandments and Christians don’t live perfect lives. There is a lot of veering off the mark. But at least God’s core values remain as the pillar and ground of truth and are there for people to come back to when they fail, and they fail consistently through the self serving human attitudes that we all have in common no matter what our values are. God is dealing with this state of affairs right now this very moment. This is a recurring theme in the Bible.

At one stage of Israel’s history they were taken captive by a man called Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, which was the most powerful and glorious city in the world (Babel/Babylon – the same word - confusion). Israel were placed in bondage under the religion and culture of that place. At one point the king decided to build a huge statue of gold, almost as tall as a ten storey building (Daniel 3:. He made a decree that at any time when his chosen music was played everyone had to bow down and worship that image. If they did not bow down to the image they would be thrown into a fiery furnace. There were three young Jewish men who had been given high honour in the political and administrative courts of Babylon, and they had been given the Babylonian names of Meshach, Shadrack and Abednego. It was reported to the king by some other Babylonian court leaders that these three men had refused to bow down to the image. They were called before the king who was furious with them and told them to recant, but they said that their God was able to deliver them from the fire and even if He didn’t, they were prepared to serve Him to the death. So the furnace was heated up seven times hotter than usual and the king had some of his toughest senior military leaders throw the men into the furnace. However the soldiers were burned to a crisp trying to cast the men into the fire, and when the king stood to inspect the destruction of the three Jewish men he was astonished; Daniel 3:24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered “True, O king.” He said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like the son of God.” Nebuchadnezzar then proclaimed to the entire Nation that anyone who speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way. He then declared;’ It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation.

It says in the Bible that the fourth person with those men in the fire was like the Son of God – That was Jesus with them in the fiery trial. A true Witness is seen in God’s people today through the power and influence of the Holy Spirit, even as we go through the fiery trials of faith in these days that purify our hearts. Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses… (Not just talking about God but having God on display in our lives…) This work of becoming the expression of our true selves in Christ involves going through the trials of faith to trust God’s love and mercy and truth to us in the transformational process (1Peter 4.12… don’t think it strange when the fiery trials come… Peter also says this is the goal of your faith 1Peter 1:9.). Holy Spirit is reflecting back to you who you are, joined to the Lord as one Spirit. We recognize our shortcomings and obtain mercy and find grace to help. All of this is happening in real time now no matter what we see happening in the midst of all the emotional confusion and deception and conflict and rage going on in what we see around us. We are being preserved in the midst of fiery trials being made into the image of God, and he will be seen there with us, that is the witness of his presence with us finding meaning and purpose in all that happens. It takes place when you are still, knowing that He s God, and as you behold Him in this way the Bible says (2Corinthans 3:18) you are being transformed into His image by the Spirit of The Lord

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UNSEEN ARMY 2Kings 7:1 There is a story in the Old Testament about the prophet Elisha and how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This is a story of the limited power of darkness when it faces up to the unlimited power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world, the real world of God’s activity, the world dominated by light and faith, and alas, darkness inhabits this realm also but with faith we learn to withstand it and overcome. The king od Israel was ruling over a fortress city in the high region of Samaria. The city was put under siege by the king of Syria, and because there was a great famine in the region, the people of the city were starving, and the Syians had cut off any food supply lines that might have existed from down in the more fertile region of the Jordan. It got to the point that after a time even a donkey's head sold for fifty dollars and a cup of dove's dung brought three dollars! This angered the king and he was trying to find someone to blame for all of this disaster. Elisha was sitting at home, the elders sitting with him. The king had made up his mind that Elisha the prophet must be to blame because he had not organized God to come to the rescue, and he finally decided to blame God as well. He had already dispatched his attendant to take Elisha’s head off, but before the man arrived Elisha told his friends he knew what the King was planning and said shut the door and lock it. While he was giving his instructions, the king showed up with his attendant, making charges against God; ‘This trouble we’re in has been sent from GOD! And what's next? I'm fed up with GOD! The Syrian army is outside and the people inside the walls are starving to death and paying exorbitant amounts of money for something to eat, a donkey's head is selling for fifty dollars and a cup of dove's dung costs three dollars! Then Elisha brings a word from God to the king. ‘by this time tomorrow two gallons of flour or four gallons of barley grain will be sold in the markets of Samaria for a dollar!" But the king’s attendant tells everyone not to believe it ‘Do you think God is going to open trapdoors in Heaven and pour food though them? 

Meanwhile four lepers who are sitting just outside the gates wondering what their fate might be. ‘Well. what are we sitting here for, just waiting to die "We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and face the challenge – we’ll present ourselves to the Syrian army, and they might even feed us and let us live, if so then so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway. So that evening they went out to the camp of the Syrians, but there was no one there! 

To understand what was really going on here we have to look at the previous chapter and see what had happened to the previous king of Syria with regards to Elisha a year åor two beforehand. That king had been marauding the outposts of Israel whenever Israel sent an army to protect the people, but Elisha knew from God what the Syrian king was up to so he warned the king of Israel every time so that they escaped attack. When the Syrian king found this out he sent his army out to capture Elisha who was not living in the fortress city at that time but in another area of Samaria called Dothan. When the Syrian army surrounded Dothan to take Elisha, Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, woke up one morning to see Dothan surrounded by the Syrian army and collapsed in panic, but Elisha prayed for God to open Gehazi’s eyes to see the Unseen Army of the Lord arrayed against the Syrian army, and said to him ‘greater are they that are with us than they that are with them’ and the servant calmed down. Then Elisha prayed for God to put blindness upon the Syrians so that they were groping around in the dark, then he walked and asked the commander of the army who he was looking for, and when the commander told him, Elisha said Oh, he doesn’t live here any more but I’ll lead you to where he lives, and he led them all to the fortified city of the king of Israel (the one in our current story). When they all arrived he prayed to God for the eyes of the Syrians to be opened, and they found they were in the hands of the king of Israel, who wanted to take them all into captivity, but Elisha told the kings to give them a good feed and send them home (he obviously knew there were better things to come).

So getting back to the four lepers finding the Syrian camp deserted the Bible tells us (2Kings 7:6) that God had made the whole Syrian army hear sounds of a host of  a great army approaching and the clatter of speeding chariots and a loud galloping of horses. "The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians to attack us," they cried out. 7. So they panicked and fled into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else. 8 When the lepers arrived at the edge of the camp they went into one tent after another, eating, drinking wine, and carrying out silver and gold and clothing and hiding it.  9 Finally they said to each other, "This isn't right. This is wonderful news, and we aren't sharing it with anyone! Even if we wait until morning, some terrible calamity will certainly fall upon us; come on, let's go back and tell the people at the palace."

10 So they went back to the city and told the attendant what had happened--they had gone out to the Syrian camp and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there was not a soul around. 11 Then the attendant shouted the news to those in the palace. 12 The king got out of bed (trying to guess what had happened – and guessing wrongly!) and told his officers, "I know what has happened. The Syrians know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields, thinking that we will be lured out of the city. Then they will attack us and make slaves of us and get in." 13 One of his officers cautiously replied, "We'd better send out scouts first to see. Let two charioteers of take chariots out with our four remaining horses and if something happens to them all it won't be any greater loss than if they stay here and die with the rest of us!"  14 So the king sent out two charioteers to see where the Syrians had gone. 15 They followed a trail of clothing and equipment all the way to the Jordan River-- thrown away by the Syrians in their haste. The scouts returned and told the king, 16 and the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the camp of the Syrians. So it was true that two gallons of flour and four gallons of barley were sold that day for one dollar, just as the Lord had said!

All the players in this story had an opinion about what was going on, and they had a reaction to it or a response in it. Some were panicking, some had given up all hope, some were weighing it all up, and like the king, suspicious and getting it wrong, some decided to act with due diligence and caution like the officer who suggested to do a scout patrol. What were they seeing? Did they see that God was at work with the Angel Armies – greater are they that are for us than they that are against us ….  These are the things we ask ourselves when there is a crisis – are we being driven by fear or are we being inspired by faith, or guided by wisdom with ears to hear…

The four lepers had to make a choice. They could sit around in despondency and wait to die or they could face the challenge of facing the enemy, so they went into the enemy camp and saw with their own eyes that God had been at work. God had not only supernaturally defeated the enemy but he had poured out his provision for his people. If they had not taken this initiative no one would had moved in the entire city and they all would have starved, despite the fact that they had the word of blessing from the prophet. Elisha had done his part - he had shared the Word of the Lord.

We have the word of blessing, the good news of God’s goodness to us through Jesus. We have to move on that and take initiative against the bluff of the devil. All Satan has in his armory are the weapons of darkness and deception. Satan has no creative power. He is a deceiver and a confuser. The battle between light and darkness is not hanging in the balance. The battle has been won. God is not in a defensive position against darkness – He has defeated it. Darkness can only work on us, and the Bible says that when we align ourselves with God and his authority and resist the devil the darkness HAS to flee (James 4:7). His target is our minds and our hearts where he wants to plant confusion and deception and fear (2Cor. 4:3). We have to take the initiative and withstand him.

The Bible says the whole world lies in darkness, and we have all experienced that. But if we have the truth the darkness cannot harm us. Satan likes to put himself on display but when his bluff is called he has to back down. We are to walk into the darkness bravely and confidently. The four lepers walked boldly into the enemy camp, and we are to do the same. The risk for us is NOT in being harmed by the enemy – the risk for us is in NOT putting our trust in God that his goodness will come to us. That is not a good path for us to go down. The word of God about the blessing and the relief of the famine had been spoken by Elisha and was already in operation. The name ELISHA means ‘God of Blessing’. The word of spiritual blessing has been spoken over us in Jesus (Eph 1:3) and we are to trust that it is working in our lives and it will come to pass in every situation. 

We accept that the current adverse or confusing situation is being used for God’s greater purpose and we give thanks in purposeful prayer. That is so that we can be strengthened in our faith in times of sometimes painful uncertainty, rather than going in to negative resistance like Israel’s king did and look for who to blame (He blamed God and God’s messenger or like many people do we just blame the devil!). No, instead we accept that God is at work in the Unseen, with his Unseen Army, even when the uncertain situation discomforts us. This strengthens our faith. Paul said he did not run aimlessly or fight to beat the air but his commitment to spiritual fitness was by taking on reality with hope and faith. That will always lead to our finally seeing the supernatural effect of his working in our lives and in those we bring before him in our prayer. We realise that the battle is ongoing until God’s a victory is apparent for all to see. 

Ephesians 6:12 tells us to throw down the spiritual powers. Then it tells is what armor to put on. Truth, peace, faith, love, which will overcome anything the devil throws at our We are not feebly struggling against a powerful dark force but aligning ourselves with a powerful God force – and throwing down the darkness.. We assume our place of authority with Jesus ABOVE the powers of darkness. We declare that we are serving the purpose of God in our generation.

2 Cor 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds

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WAR IN HEAVEN

The distress and confusion and uncertainty that people are experiencing everywhere in the earth at this time is not just because of our own limited and vulnerable humanity. And it’s not totally because we are in the midst of a global calamity – a pandemic that is getting worse by the day. We are also in the midst of a global spiritual battle. There are spiritual forces that are active in the heavens that have been operating for thousands of years upon the human soul to oppress and deceive and provoke people into reactions of fear and anger and despair, and greed and resentment and malice – imprinted onto the soul of humanity for the first time – then Cain and Abel. In this current world crisis the spiritual activity of the dark powers is ramping up. These powers seek to blind peoples’ minds from believing in an all loving and all- powerful God and to influence them in their minds and will and emotions. These powers intensify the sense of conflict and hostility we are seeing acted out on our streets and on our tv screens and media as news reports in real life - not just a movie. There is a battle going on in the heavens and on the earth.

THE BIBLE TELLS S WE ARE IN THIS BATTLE STRATEGICALLY Ephesians 6:12… be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deception of the devil. because we are not wrestling (pallo/ballo – throw down) against flesh and blood, but against principalities (arche), against powers (exousia – delegated influence), against the rulers (Kosmokrator) of the darkness of this age, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So we are not fighting other people - the battle is against spiritual beings. There are three major categories of spiritual activity involved;

Powers (exousia) influence individuals – To assail peoples’ minds and will and emotions and create confusion, division and separation. Principalities (arche) influence demographic areas to shape an ungodly culture. This involves cities and regions and towns. It is a feed-back loop of human power struggles being fed by spiritual power bases of darkness and then the earthly confusion and deception and hostility is fed back into the heavens again, and around it goes. Rulers of darkness (kosmokraters) These exercise strategic global influence to disrupt God’s plan and purpose in the earth and to incite corruption at high levels of government. Much of this corruption is being brought into the light in these tumultuous times.

All of these spiritual entities are under the sovereign power of God and he uses them for his purposes. So why does God allow this? So that God’s people will grow in courage and character and faith and spiritual authority and be a demonstration of his Kingdom power in the earth – (Jesus in the wilderness Matthew 14. AND Peter being sifted as wheat Luke 22:31). There is really no neutral ground. Every spirit and angelic power exerts a spiritual energy into the spiritual, emotional, cultural and relational atmosphere in which we live and breathe. We either come under the influence of God’s Spirit or under the influence of a dark spirit. This has been happening since Adam came under the influence of Lucifer in the garden of Eden. Darkness began to hold sway over humanity. 1John 5:19 We know we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway- (influence) - of the evil one). BUT WE HAVE THE UPPER HAND. Please do not forget the heavenly hosts of good angels that God sends to minister to us – (Hebrews 1:14) and the angels that stand before the throne of the Father on behalf of little children (Mathew 18:10)

What do the Scriptures say about where we stand spiritually in all of this? Colossians 1:13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image (Eikon – representative NB 2Corinthians 3:18 regarding ourselves) of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or kdominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. (again – his purposes)

Jesus was the image (eikon) of God which means he represented the nature and being of his Father and his Kingdom of Light, imprinting his image of Truth and faith and love upon humanity. John 1.9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. That was his work for his short time on the earth. Jesus working his image into us through the Holy Spirit. We are all ‘imagers’, bringing the influence and spiritual energy of Light or Darkness. An imager imprints that image on the world. We are here to bear the image of Jesus (2Corinthians 3:18) and imprint his influence and energy into this age in which we live. Satan bears the image of the kingdom of darkness and imprints his pride, rebellion and deception upon humanity. The dark angels imprinted their images onto the idols that were worshiped throughout the Old Testament.

So we are no longer having to break through from below because since Jesus was raised up to seated above all powers in heavenly places in god’s kingdom we are now seated there with him.(ephesians 2:6). We are now above all those angels…but in the old testament everyone was underneath those heavenly powers and here is an example of the Old Testament pattern of spiritual warfare. Daniel 10:12 Then the angel said to me, ‘from the first day that you set your heart to understand, your words were heard; and I have come. But the prince power over the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; but Michael, one of the chief rulers came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the prince power of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the last days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.” “O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be to you; be strong, yes, be strong!” So when he spoke to me I was strengthened, and said, “Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.” Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth. (No one upholds me against these, except Michael your prince.

We do not operate that way anymore. Jesus has also given us his power over the principalities and powers that seek to influence us Colossians 2:15 he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.

We now have a new perspective of our place with Jesus ABOVE those powers of darkness. God has given us a new kind of faith and the grace that empowers us in a new kind of prayer with a new kind of understanding that we are partners with God in his reordering of all things in accord with his will and purpose in the earth - truth and faith and love. This means that we will see the supernatural effect of his working in our lives and in those we bring before him in our prayer. We assume our place of authority with Jesus ABOVE the powers of darkness. We become aware of our measure of faith through which we enter into the grace that empowers us. We realise that the battle is ongoing until God’s a victory is apparent for all to see . We accept that the current adverse or confusing situation is being used for God’s greater purpose and we give thanks in purposeful prayer. We declare that we are serving the purpose of God in our generation. We choose what we will image and imprint and WE CAN apprehend how we are influencing our world for the will and purpose of God.

We choose this life alongside Jesus as being the centre of purpose and meaning for our lives.

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AGE OF INNOCENCE We were chosen by God to live our lives in a state of innocence before him. Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be set apart for him (holy) and blameless before him, In love.

Our English word ‘innocence’ comes from the Latin word IN-NOCERE – not to harm, blameless, and also means not harmed or violated – a sort of spotlessness. There is also the Biblical Greek word akeraios; of pure motivation – KJV blameless and harmless also 'unharmed,'. 'Intact,' 'innocent.

Where do we find this innocence? In our natural lives it is our early childhood experience. And today I will discuss the spiritual reality of our innocence in the eyes of God.

Let us look at those years of early childhood, up to about the age of seven. Here is where it is required that we receive unconditional attention and love from our parents, but we must keep in mind that there are no perfect parents. This is the requirement because we have not yet learned to manage our way through this world of accountability for doing wrong, or developed any resolute commitment for doing what is right. This period of time is our age of innocence where we start to become obedient and cooperative and be spontaneous and even be annoying, but it is here where we do get heaps of mercy and forgiveness and at the same time become aware of consequences for breaking the rules, as there are rules and we accept these rules as being authentic because we trust our parents that they know how life works, and for the most part we are patiently nurtured through this formative time. This is the same in most cultures. And of course, so much depends upon the relational integrity and empathy of the parents. Some parents and especially some cultures are more aware of this requirement and even formalise it up to about age seven.IE the Japanese culture. I experienced this when I ministered in evangelical churches in Tokyo and the kids ran around and played right through the church service and everyone was smiling, even me after a little while. One of the mothers explained that this is the way it is with children up to about age six or seven- and then they really get into the discipline – for the rest of their lives.

Going back to the opening Scripture - This was the destined state of our life experience from eternity from God as our Father. That word blameless (innocent) becomes a way of life as a grown responsible adult when we discover by faith that we have been given that status through Jesus. He has won back that place of innocence for us that we fell from when Adam disregarded his place of oneness and trust in his Father God by disobeying him. Adam and Eve were charged with the responsibility of being obedient to the commandment about not eatig from that tree of knowledge. They then suffered the consequences of guilt and shame and the disintegration of their souls and they hid from a loving God. And so did all of us. Then Jesus, the second Adam, or last Adam, lived a complete and sacrificial innocent life before God on our behalf. He sowed that innocent life as a seed into death, and then the seed germinated and his life sprung to life in the earth through the Holy Spirit,who was sent after his death and resurrection and ascension into Heaven. Paul tells us that we can now live our lives out from that state of bestowed innocence.

Philippians 2:15 … that you may be blameless and innocent (akeraios; of pure motivation – KJV harmless also 'unharmed,'. 'Intact,' 'innocent.), children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

Jesus explained this state of innocence by using the innocence of children to show us what it meant to be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. If you receive these you receive me!’ Matthew 19: Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus spoke about is the relational framework of the unconditional love that we receive from our Heavenly Father, just as a perfect parent would bestow that unconditional love and attention upon a little child. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just a destination of going to Heaven one day – it is a state of relationship with God and with one another here and now on earth. We enter into this childlike trusting place through faith.

Why do we lose this lovely freedom and sense of innocence after our early childhood. It is after these first seven years that we learn to devise our own ways of getting the love and attention we want. We suffer from the clumsy attempts at trying to earn or demand that unconditional love and attention and we get hurt by others who also want the same thing. Unconditional becomes harder and harder to find – hurt people hurt people. We can only find the unconditional loving attention by becoming as a little child and entering the Kingdom of God, which is the relational framework of unconditional love that makes us whole – that is the saving of our soul.

This integrates all of our pain from our past and our anxiety about the future into the place of oneness and communion with God. Discovery is the act of faith that allows us to dwell in the unconditional love of God towards us that is God’s framework of relationship towards us from eternity. This is where we experience the wholeness of our soul in our mind and in our emotions because we are joined in oneness of spirit with God’s Spirit.

This is entering the kingdom of God. It is living another kind of life. It is called in the bible ‘living in newness of life’. It is another world. It is becoming as an innocent child as Jesus said we should do.

His righteousness – His innocence We are told many times (over 70 times) in the epistles that we have the righteousness of Christ. I believe we are also told that we have the innocence of Christ. I found that the Greek word for righteous (dikaios) is also translated innocent. g1342. ??????? dikaios; from 1349; equitable (in character or act); just, right(-eous). innocent, holy (absolutely or relatively): — Many people find it difficult to see themselves as ‘righteous’ before God in Christ even though that is the profound truth of being in ‘right standing’ with God because of what Jesus did for us. However the picture that many people get is that ‘righteous’ only applies when we do everything ‘right’, and can end up making us feel we are falling far too short of the mark that we can never believe it. Having the innocence of Christ gives us a picture of receiving unconditional care and attention from a loving Father God. He sees our still imperfect falling short, but also sees the yielded trusting heart of a child that is growing more and more responsible for cooperating with our loving Father and desiring more and more to please him. This is something we can believe in and confidently aim for and hit the mark. This act of faith allows our innocent self to now ‘act out’ the peaceful life of being unconditionally loved. The word ‘peace - eirene’ means oneness - oneness with God, the source of our being. So we come to him confidently and wholeheartedly trusting in his powerful work of renewal within us. Everything that has been put out of place in our disintegrated souls is put back in its right place. Everything becomes integrated into our shared life with God as we bring ourselves into that place of abiding in him.

This yielding response can be practised till it is entered into without struggle. We set aside time to be mindful of our oneness with God, and of the continual flow of his Spirit to us and through us that touches everything within us and in our world around us with transformation and renewal. We learn that when life makes us feel ‘upset’ we are being ‘setup’ (Up-set = set-up) to spiritually enter the innocence that Jesus spoke of when he said ‘let the little children come unto me’…

We are also fulfilling the prayer of ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven because we are causally connected to God in the outworking of this as co laborers , participating with God in his Kingdom in action here on earth.

Carrying this presence as a reality of faith in our life changes the people and the circumstances in our world that is around us. We are not trying to change it, because we can’t. God can and God does and we are co-workers with him. This is living life ‘on purpose’ – it is The purpose.

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JERICHO  Today we are looking at the story of Joshua leading Israel in the defeat of the city of Jericho, where a miracle of God caused the walls of the city to fall down so that Israel could begin their actual entrance into the Promised Land after crossing the river Jordan. This city was the first of many that Israel was to occupy in their conquest and possession of the Promised Land.  

We saw how God brought Israel through the Jordan into the Land of Promise through the miracle of holding back the waters of the flooding Jordan River. The miracle came about through the ark being carried into the water by the twelve priests. The ark represented the presence of God - and the twelve priests, one for each tribe represented ALL the people. This also represents ALL of us as humanity, entering into a new way of life through Jesus (our Joshua)

It could have seemed at the time of the crossing of the Jordan that Israel had arrived at last and were now IN the Land, and in one sense they had arrived and were IN the Land, but in reality, possession of the Land had only just begun. The promise of possessing the Land was tied to the promise;  Deuteronomy 6:11 I will give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant.  All this was yet to come and besides, they were to grow into a mighty Nation in the Earth that represented a living God in the Heavens. 

We now come to the first obstacle in their way to going in and possessing the Land – They had to conquer Jericho. They were told that Jericho had to be defeated and devoted to God as his holy place, and it was for Israel an enemy enclave occupied mostly by the Amorites. Jericho means ‘a place of favour’ and ‘the place of palms’, regarded as the oasis of all oases in Canaan. Jericho is the most ancient walled city in history, its walls having been destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years. In Joshua’s time it had outer walls 2 metres thick and 5 metres high plus one tower, with higher inner fortification walls. Surrounding the outer wall was a ditch over 8 metres wide by 3 metres deep, cut through solid bedrock. The total area of the upper city and fortification system was about nine acres, and the city at the time housed only a few thousand people. However more people from the surrounding area would have fled to Jericho at the time, terrified by the sight of over two million Israelites with thousands of head of cattle creating an enormous cloud of dust that would have been visible from afar as they slowly advanced.  

Everything that would happen from now on for Israel would belong to a new order of the plan and purpose of God. They were now called upon to take responsibility for their part in the accomplishment of God in his purposes. One small example was that now having crossed the Jordan the manna ceased falling from Heaven and they had to get their own food from the land. The battle of Jericho was a strategic disciplined operation for all the people of Israel. 

THE BATTLEOF JERICHO

Joshua 5:13 Joshua went and stood before Jericho. He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him, with his drawn sword in His hand. Joshua went to Him and said, “Are You for us or for our enemies?” He said, “Neither, for I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” Then Joshua fell with his face to the ground and worshipped. Then he said, “What does my Lord wish to say to His servant?” The commander of the army of the LORD said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” 

This special place was not just to remain an enemy fortress but a holy place of God and everything in Jericho had to be devoted to The Lord. The commander of the army of the Lord was obviously Jesus and not an angel, because he allowed Joshua to worship him (Whenever people worshiped angels in the Bible the angels told them not to worship them because they were not God but just an angel), and Joshua called him lord (the same root word as Adonai).

Joshua 6:2 the Lord said to Joshua, "Jericho and its king and all its mighty warriors are already defeated, for I have given them to you! Your entire army is to walk around the city once a day for six days, followed by seven priests walking ahead of the Ark, each carrying a trumpet made from a ram's horn. On the seventh day you are to walk around the city seven times, with the priests blowing their trumpets. Then, when they give one long, loud blast, all the people are to give a mighty shout, and the walls of the city will fall down; then move in upon the city from every direction."

When they first came to the Jordan after being in the wilderness for forty years they all crossed the river safely because the twelve priests were obedient in their responsibility to carry the presence of God, even into the turbulent Jordan. The rest of the people just had to follow at a distance, but in this new way of life they were partners with him in the execution of his plans and purpose as his children and as the heirs of his inheritance. This was a disciplined operation of both marshalled action and restraint from every one of them. Israel were not a battle-ready trained army and they didn’t have to be just yet, because God was giving them the victory in a miraculous way.

This time instead of twelve priests carrying the ark, seven priests carried the presence of God. There were another seven priests in front of those priests blowing the trumpets. A company of armed men was to lead the priests and a rear guard of armed men was to march behind the priests, and as they were to keep silence for the whole period of that time – in contrast to the murmuring and complaining from the previous generation that wandered in the wilderness.  And ALL the people were to give the victory shout at the end to bring down the walls.

The number seven is significant in the Bible and is symbolic of the completion and fulness of meaning of the finality God’s purposes in the earth. (Seven days creation and rest – the complete work of both the creative work of God and of our communion with God).  Seven priests carried the ark. (The completeness of the presence of God). Seven trumpets were blown. They walked once around the city each day and seven times around the city on the seventh day, and the seventh time on the seventh day the trumpets were to sound the victory blast then everyone gave the victory shout, and the walls.  

THE STORY OF US TODAY. 1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were lessons for us, written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the age has come. These lessons for us, is the ‘us’ of all humanity. The Apostle Paul did not just write this to a church in Corinth but to all of humanity, to know the story of the redeeming work of God throughout history.  

WHAT IS REDEMPTION?  To redeem means to bring something that was lost into being found again, something that was out of order to be reordered, something that was malformed to be transformed, something that was broken to be restored.  What had been broken between God and ‘us’? Communion with God and humanity had been broken in Adam, but God did not give up on the fulfillment of his original purpose for the whole human race, to be in communion with him and to be his friend and partner in his plan and purpose for his creation. God chose one Nation Israel to represent all of us as the example of his redemption for all mankind. So Israel had to go through trial after trial of faith and trust in God, and the trial of those lessons show that they could not fully trust God. Finally Israel gave birth to Jesus, who fully and completely trusted God on our behalf. 

So what do the walls of Jericho represent spiritually, for us today? For us those walls represent the wall of resistance around our hearts which is our human struggle of independence. We need to allow the presence of God to surround us just like the presence of God was walked around the walls seven time seven and the walls came down. God desires to capture our hearts and is able to bring us into communion and partnership with himself by surrounding us with his presence.

In those days the territory of the Promised Land was actual land but now the territory is the soil of our hearts. They were told that Jericho had to be defeated and devoted to God as his holy place. So just as Jericho behind the walls had to become holy so do our hearts. God also made a decree that the walls of Jericho were never to be rebuilt – and they weren’t! (Joshua 6:26). This work of God in capturing our hearts is a step by step process and it can be painful as there are lots of things in our personal garden that have to be uprooted or pulled down. 

This becomes the unrelenting redeeming process of the mindfuness of God toward us in bringing order out of disorder. Our response of faith to God in his creative reordering of all things trusts in his working all things in our lives together for good. God’s first act of creation was one of bringing light into darkness, and that creative act has never ceased to operate.  Everything at any one moment in time is in need of that reordering process because nothing is yet completely transformed. We ourselves constantly create disorder within our lives because of our own limitations, and creation is always colliding within itself, changing from one form of arrangement and energy into another. But we have within ourselves in union with God the creative power to see our lives and everything in them being transformed according to God’s plan, from hope to hope, one moment and one day at a time.

We can be co-workers with God in creating the future with God through what we do with him and through him in the present moment. This is the responsibility we are given. The world at this time is in its greatest need of change. You or I cannot change the world; we cannot even change another person, but we can let God change us. When we do that, that is when everything in our world is invited into the space of creative transformation that we have created. This is how the world could be changed. If there were enough people today ready and willing to accept and embrace that privilege and  responsibility we would witness the transformation of humanity, spirit, soul, and body.

This is the hope that is always before us, that this transformation is happening moment by moment as we become consciously mindful of his presence and creative goodwill towards us at all times and in every situation. 

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MINDFULNESS AND COLLECTIVE SUFFERING

God’s mindfulness towards us is a two way thing - God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation. (Romans 12:2 - being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed? – it is more than just behaviour - it is the consciousness of who we really are in union with God through Jesus. This consciousness is what captures the present moment and It fills the now with its fulness and focus. It is not simply hanging around in the background somewhere – It is front and centre in the mind. It becomes the eternal Now of our existence – always active.

We develop in the growth of mindfulness with God through the challenges of life. We each have different personal situations to contend with; relational, financial, self-worth, general fears and anxieties. But the greatest challenge is not what the actual external situation is but the fear on the inside that needs to be faced and met with faith.

Our state of mindful faith in these situations determines the quality of peace and stability in our personal lives. Otherwise life becomes a series of reactions because we are not in that settled place of mindful faith within ourselves and this affects the quality of our wisdom in decision making and the ability to recover from the consequences of our mistakes and from the mishaps that happen unexpectedly.

When we are flowing in mindfulness with God we can not only find a place of peace within ourselves but a place of empowered faith in God that makes us more aware of his compassion for the pain and suffering that others are going through so that we can touch his compassion and be more effective in providing help and care and prayer.

In this way we can come together in many places as communities of faith, love and care, being mindful of one another that we are all going through different things at different times at different levels, and being aware of a ‘faith safety net’ of common goodwill and care in the group.

But - when the entire global community comes under a shared existential threat of common adversity and danger there is a level of collective stress and anxiety that intensifies each person’s personal challenges and causes a collective consciousness of unresolved hardship or suffering. It is felt or discerned as a silent suffering that seems to hang in the air over people everywhere as a spiritual energy of darkness and uncertainty. This causes an accumulation of distress, physically, emotionally, financially, politically and spiritually, as fear and darkness invade the minds of people. Light has to come into this darkness.

It is at times like this that God provides grace for us to operate at a deeper level of focussed faith that his power is at work in the entire situation.

At times like these there is such a thing as standing in the gap. The Bible says God looks for someone to stand in the gap for others on his behalf. Ezekiel 22:30 So I looked for someone among them… who would stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the whole Land (eres- earth), that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.

This is the cry of the Father’s heart that was answered by Jesus almost two thousand years ago when he stood in the gap for us in his death and resurrection, and brought us into union with himself and the Father through The Holy Spirit. There is a story of this in the Bible that represents this standing in the gap principle. It is the story of Joshua when He led Israel across the river Jordan, out of the wilderness into the Promised Land. (Joshua is the Old Testament name for Jesus, Yeshua)

Joshua 3:1 Joshua and all the people of Israel left Acacia and arrived that evening at the banks of the Jordan River, where they camped for a few days before crossing. On the third day officers went through the camp giving these instructions:"When you see the priests carrying the Ark of God, follow them. You have never before been where we are going now, so they will guide you. However, stay 2000 cubits behind, with a clear space between you and the Ark; For tomorrow, the Lord will do a great miracle." In the morning Joshua ordered the priests, "Take up the Ark and lead us across the river!"And so they started out. "Today,"the Lord told Joshua,"I will give you great honor, so that all Israel will know that I am with you just as I was with Moses. Instruct the priests who are carrying the Ark to stop at the edge of the river." Then Joshua summoned all the people and told them; Today you are going to know for sure that the living God is among you and that he will, without fail, drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites--all the people who now live in the land you will soon occupy. Think of it! The Ark of God, who is Lord of the whole earth, will lead you across the river! "Now select twelve men, one from each tribe, for a special task. When the priests who are carrying the Ark touch the water with their feet, the river will stop flowing as though held back by a dam, and will pile up as though against an invisible wall!" Now it was the harvest season and the Jordan was overflowing all its banks; but as the people set out to cross the river and as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river's edge, suddenly, far up the river at the city of Adam, the water began piling up as though against a dam! And the water below that point flowed on to the Dead Sea until the riverbed was empty. Then all the people crossed at a spot where the river was close to the city of Jericho, and the priests who were carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan and waited as all the people passed by.

Joshua told the company of twelve priests (representing the twelve tribes) to carry the ark upon their shoulders. The ark contained the presence of God.

The people were to follow this company at a distance of 2000 cubits. Everything that happened to them was a pattern for us to learn from in these days.

The priests were commanded to stand at the edge of the Jordan River and God said he would do a great miracle and drive out all their enemies before them. The people were told ‘When the priests who are carrying the Ark touch the water with their feet, the river will stop flowing as though held back by a dam and will pile up as though against an invisible wall (all the way back to Adam!’). This was the work of God, not the work of the priests; all they had to do was to carry the ark, the presence of God, but they had to have faith that God would do the mighty miracle work in the world of the unseen. Their natural minds would have said ‘You are going to drown in there’, but they would have had no doubt that they were bearing the presence of God on behalf of all those people.

Then all the people crossed at a spot where the river was close to the city of Jericho, and the priests who were carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan and waited as all the people passed by.

The people would never have entered into the Promised Land or entered into a new life under God where they could give thanks to have his spiritual blessings and his provision of fields and crops and houses. They had become used to struggling and straggling in the wilderness without hope or confidence – and now their time had come. But it required that the priests stood in the gap.

THE STORY OF US TODAY. 1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. The people were told in that Scripture to keep at a distance of 2000 cubits as they followed the priests who were carrying the ark of the presence of God. The obedience of the priests carrying the presence of God and stepping into the turbulent Jordan river prepared the way for the miracle of God in stopping the river from preventing all the people to cross over on dry land into the blessings of the Land of Promise.

Those priests were a prophetic picture of Jesus as our High Priest overcoming darkness and death for us so that we could enter into the fulness of the Promise of God in Jesus. What could this 2000 cubits signify? Consider the fact that it was about 2000 years ago that Jesus was born, but it was some years later at around thirty years of age when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan and carried the presence of God in that river for all of humanity. His baptism in the Jordan river was a picture of his death and resurrection, just as our water baptism is described in the Bible. Romans 6:3 we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we can also walk in newness of life. Jesus stood in the gap for all of us so that we could be included in his life.

In these days of global confusion and darkness God is calling for a people like those priests, to stand in the gap and to create a pathway for others to find light and truth and to enter in to a place of confidence and hope in the fulness of God.

Today we can be that company of priests that can stand in the gap for others. We can carry the presence of God. We carry that presence in our hearts by faith. We are able to live in the two-way mindfulness of God, being conscious of his desire to express his life through us and with us. We can become the light of God in the midst of great darkness. What does it mean for us to put our feet in the Jordan like those priests did? They faced a huge challenge of faith; they would have thought they could have drowned in that turbulent river, but they trusted God because they had been told; ‘The Lord will do a great miracle’.

We are following in the footsteps of those priests, but more than that, it means that we are following Jesus in our willingness to experience the cross in our lives, for ourselves and for the sake of others. Taking up our cross is that same kind of challenge of faith that those priests faced. It is the challenge of denying ourselves for the sake of being aligned to the miracle working power of God.

This is because we know that the experience of the cross always leads to the experience of his resurrection. We find faith for his supernatural working in the world of the unseen for us, not only in our lives, but also in the challenging situations of those people in our world that we stand in the gap for.

There are many people that you may have been praying for, that are struggling and straggling, but God wants to make a way for them to enter in to a new life of faith and hope and love. He hears the cry of the suffering hearts and he has made a way. There is still time for them.

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MINDFULNESS – THE ETERNAL NOW

I would like to talk about the practice of mindfulness today which is something practised by people of many belief systems. However I am starting with a Scripture that speaks about God’s mindfulness towards us, because that is where mindfulness originally came from .  Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? (This speaks to all of us (mankind) and also Jesus (Son of Man) The root word for mindful in that Scripture is mnaomai (the idea of fixture in the mind - a mental grasp). 

So how is Mindfulness to be applied in practice? Mindfulness can be described as the practice of paying attention, with an intention, and in the present moment.  People in our Western culture have been engaging in the practice of mindfulness for some years now. It is a discipline that helps people to stop anxious or distracting thoughts from coming into the mind, helping them to appreciate and pay attention to what is central to them in their here and now experiences and in the inner space of what is meaningful in their life. People use mindfulness as a tool for sharpening their focus of attention and efficiency in doing productive things or for engaging in leisure or creative skills, and also as a form of emotional therapy for staying calm in times of stress. It has generally become a psychological discipline that is useful for finding some order in a busy and agitated world. That is well and good and helpful but it does not reach the highest goal of conscious mindfulness that God has prepared for us.  Our mindfulness of God does more than just help us to pay attention to the inner space of what is meaningful in our life, it puts us in touch with the source of all meaning in our life, God himself.

So we have seen that it was God who invented the practice of mindfulness and we can see that he is focussing his full attention upon us with an intention of seeing us becoming the person we were created to be from eternity, and he has the attention, the intention and the eternal now, his present moment. And he wants us to get to know him and also to know that we are known by him, and can communicate with him at a level of close and intimate relationship – so it is a two way thing -  God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation. (Romans 12:2 -  being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed? – it is more than just behaviour - it is the consciousness of who we really are in union with God through Jesus. This consciousness is what captures the present moment and It fills the now with it’s fulness and focus. It is not simply hanging around in the background somewhere – It is front and centre in the mind. It becomes the eternal Now of our existence – always active. 

God wants us to know that we are known. God wants to help us locate that known self within himself in us – that is our inner source of power and love- the treasure in the earthen vessel. That is the wellspring, the fountain of living water. We can’t find it on our own, we are taken there by the Holy Spirit.  John 16:14 he takes of what Jesus has said and of who Jesus is and reveals it to us.  He takes us on this journey of mindful focus and intention. The Holy Spirit hears the cry of our heart to the Father which says; I want to know someone who really knows me and can help me find who I really am and who understands how I feel so that I can be who I really should be. That is powerful – and that is why David exclaimed ‘What IS man that you are mindful of him – are you that interested and focussed?

Our life (as part of the human race, created to be part of God’s family) is about knowing God and becoming KNOWN! – Known of God;  Galatians 4.9. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world (how can you lose that focus and get bound up in the darkness etc of the world)

Being really heard is being really known When a person really feels heard they are tremendously grateful. They feel like saying – ‘how wonderful to know that someone is beginning to understand what it is like to be me’  Can you imagine God feeling like this about us?  God says; ‘how wonderful to know that someone is beginning to understand what it is like to know me and to be KNOWN by me’ 

This is how we feel when we understand that God is always being mindful of us and that we are known by him in all things. Can you imagine that God is hearing you and that he understands what it feels like to be you?  That is the work of the Holy Spirit who knew what it felt like to be Jesus as a human being just as Holy Spirit knows us as a person in everything that we feel and understand. He hears the outpouring of our own inner conflicts, our self-defeating attitudes, and our harmful or careless relational conduct towards others. We have to know we are being heard without being judged, condemned, rejected or even evaluated for performance. This is because we are serious about knowing God. When we begin to understand this and believe this that we are known like this we are entering into a healing dazzling light where our darkness can be conquered. 

Entering into this two way mindfulness with God is our wrestle with God and with ourselves.  Just as Jacob wrestled with God who was in the form of an angel, at a time when he was wondering what his life had been all about, and where was it going in the future. Jacob had been cheating and competing all his life, even trying to beat his twin brother out of the womb, and he ended up cheating him out of his patriarchal inheritance, and he had cheated his father in law out of the best of his cattle. But now he was heading for an encounter with his brother Esau who was on his way to meet up with him – and he was very very worried. Jacob engaged in that wrestle with God that God had set up and this wrestle was the time set for Jacob to come to terms with himself and who he was and to come to terms with God – and he said; ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me’, we enter into the same kind of wrestle with the same kind of feelings and with a heart of saying ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me’. I want to know who you know I am. Jacob was given another name by God after that wrestle. It was Israel. It means ‘you have prevailed with God’ – that means he stayed the distance and endured and hung on to God no matter what is cost him. It was an eternal Now moment for Jacob’s destiny. That is the story of inner transformation because in this encounter he actually prevailed against himself in his own inner being. He was touched by God on his thigh and his hip was put out of joint in the wrestle, and from then on he walked with a limp. That was the outward sign of his newfound vulnerability and humility. He was a changed man. He was known of God and he knew himself.

The word for mindful  (Mnaomai)in the Scripture comes from the same root word as ‘abiding’ -(meno). Meno - to stay (in a given place, state of expectancy): — abide, continue, to be present,

That is what it means to abide in Him.

Jesus said to his disciples and to us; John 15:4 Abide in me, and I will abide in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you abide in me. “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me (are ever being mindful of me), and I in them (ever being mindful of them), will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

So this abiding, or mindfulness, is always a present moment experience. You cannot be present yesterday, or tomorrow – only now – the eternal Now. Mutual mindfulness between God and us is our eternal destiny. Or does God want us to live eternally in a chaotic conflicted life here on earth? It is a creation at war with itself when you see the destructive storms, earthquakes, animals killing each other, and killing people, and people killing people and bacteria and virus destroying populations. This will not be the case in eternity – no more sorrow no more tears no more death. BUT Jesus said that in this world we would have tribulation, pain, suffering, conflict, but he said ‘be of good cheer, let a supernatural joy fill your life in the midst of all these things – I have overcome the world. That is what it means – That is the outworking of our two way mindfulness with God in the here and now – that is salvation – The Bible says we are ‘being saved’ and ‘Now is the day of salvation’ – even though Jesus did the saving two thousand years go – our faith appropriates NOW as a conscious reality. We can arrive at a place of faith where we can say that no matter what important or momentous things are happening I my life, the biggest thing that is REALLY happening is that God is mindful of me!

It is difficult to take our attention off ourselves and our struggles and practice our two way mindfulness and abiding with God. There are some things that you will find good to be mindful of at the start of each day. 

Remember that God is still the same. He never changes, even if yesterday everything around you changed. His mindfulness means he cannot forget you – your name is written upon the palm of his hand. Remember that his love for you is an everlasting love, and the reason you exist is because he wants to share his love with you today.  Remember that he can do all things, and that nothing is impossible for him; who created you, and the Universe, just for you.  Remember that he only wants the best for you, and he will surprise you with his goodness.  Tell him you will not worry or be anxious today, for there is no need for that – He will make life work out for you if you let him. Remember ALL this only becomes a reality when your mindfulness of faith is operating. Outside of that is the darkness of a shadowy world where chaos and anxiety take over the mind. 

we can actually hear God saying this to us, ALWAYS NOW, and we can really listen, and become mindful about how God truly feels about us. When we become willing to make mindfulness of God the centre of our lives we can finally find peace within ourself. There is a peaceful harmony in being a whole person. We also find hidden aspects of self that we have denied to our awareness, and each such discovery of our shadowy self can give us uneasy and anxious moments. But we can come to terms humbly and honestly with these shortcomings knowing we are not rejected but accepted. We live like Jacob had to live with his limp humble but prevailing into a revised and changing picture of self, a challenging, sometimes disturbing, but exciting and never- ending adventure in this present life.

Consider these aspects of God’s mindfulness towards us in the Scriptures

Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?

Hebrews 13:8 ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.’

Psalm139:17 How precious are your thoughts (rêa – intentions, purposes) towards me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

Isaiah 49:16 Behold, I have written  your name on the palms of my hands;

Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the thoughts I have towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’

Jeremiah 31:3 ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you to me.’

Luke 18:37 ‘There are things that are impossible for men, but with God nothing is impossible’

Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.

Exodus 33:14 My presence will go with you and I will give you rest, for you have found grace in my sight and I know you by name.

Philippians 4:6 ‘Do not be anxious for anything, but talk to me about what your needs are, with hope and thanksgiving in your heart.’

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WHAT CAN SEPARATE US

God’s love created us and God’s love has joined us to Himself (John 3:16). But what is our experience of God’s love? Our experience will be one of being joined to God and his love or one of being separated from his love and even from God himself. We are going to look at why so many people feel separated from the love of God, and what the Bible says about the experience of being joined to God and his love. Romans 8:35 What can ever separate us from the love of Christ? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow— No power in the sky above or in the earth below can separate us from God’s love—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.  ‘no power in the sky above or in the earth below’.  God does not withdraw his loving, but we can withdraw our receiving of his love. What power causes this, when we just read that no power can separate us? The only power that can do this is the one that lies within us as it did in Adam, to separate ourselves, as we shall see. We are provoked in this by the power of our own desires, and by the power of darkness that seeks to blind our minds, or the bitterness of adversity that makes us feel uncared for. And that lies within us in our mind and heart, either by way of turning away from his love or by not having any inner basis for believing in his love.

Personal turning away There is an Old Testament Scripture that speaks of God talking to his people about separating themselves through deliberate turning away. Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from God; And your sins have hidden His face from you. This separation was not from God’s point of view, but from theirs. His face is hidden from them only because they were pursuing their own desires and not God’s. The word iniquity means lawlessness – being a law unto one’s self. It is our face that turns away and we go where our face turns to (have you ever noticed that?)  It is being separated from letting the activity of God’s love flow in their life. 

Personal ignorance  There is also the warning of separation through not knowing, not seeing and not hearing in the New Testament for us today. Ephesians 4:17 don’t live like the Gentiles (ungodly unbelieving world) –who live in the futility of their minds, having their understanding darkened (not knowing), being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them (not hearing), because of the blindness of their heart (not seeing). People who have no idea cannot receive God’s life and love. They are not separated from God (from God’s point of view,) but they are alienated from his life as an experience of being joined to him (that is sad). Their experience is separation from God. Mark 4:12 so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven. (The invisible gorilla and the wrong point of view having persuaded them to look for the wrong thing))

Personal disgruntlement Magnifying negative circumstances – separation virus – just as widespread as the Corona virus - highly contagious – but it’s caught through negative talk and negative example. However there is a vaccine called being renewed in the spirit of the mind (repentance) and receiving faith. Separation from the life of God is a mindset that was sown into the minds of Adam and Eve and into all of humanity. This causes us to magnify the negative or difficult things in our circumstances and get bitter and disillusioned and stop trusting God, which blocks us off from the consolation of God’s love and encouragement to stay the course in difficult times.  We are living in a time of global distress and affliction and disappointment, and a lot of bitterness. The whole world sees chaos and disorder and confusion and uncertainty everywhere at this time – but the Scripture says;

Hebrews 2:8 … You have put all things in subjection under his feet… but at the present time, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him - but we see Jesus… (the invisible gorilla)

When we see Jesus with eyes of faith in the midst of all that is happening we are not separated from God’s love but are more single-mindedly joined to God, who is with us and loves us, and we see God in all that happens – we see all things working together for good and God reordering our lives and helping us to let go of the unnecessary and focus on the necessary etc. This is God’s big work in the earth today (Isaiah 28:21). This is the time to have a single mind and to focus with a single eye of faith and see the supernatural work of God bringing order out of chaos and joining people to himself through his love.  We see victory instead of defeat, hope instead of despair, faith instead of fear. Nothing is separating us from his love. We are joined and not separated. 1Corinthians 6:7…He that is joined to the Lord is ONE SPIRIT. We are able to see through all of this disorder and uncertainty and say we are well able to overcome.  Joshua and Caleb saw the challenge of the giants that had to be defeated for them to be able to enter into the Promised Land and said ‘We are well able to overcome’. 

A little while after Israel finally entered the land after their forty year journey in the wilderness Joshua blesses Caleb – we made it Caleb! and invites him to have a say – A big shout out for Caleb… this is what Caleb said; Joshua 14:6 The people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. Caleb spoke: "You'll remember what God said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me back at Kadesh Barnea. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of God sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. And I brought back an honest and accurate report at Hebron with the huge branch full of grapes so big that it needed the two of us to carry it. the other spies discouraged the people, but I stayed the course, totally with God, my God. That was the day that Moses solemnly promised, 'The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance, you and your children's, forever. Yes, you have lived totally for God.' Now look at me: God has kept me alive, as he promised. It is now forty- five years since God spoke this word to Moses, years in which Israel wandered in the wilderness. And here I am today, eighty- five years old! I'm as strong as I was the day Moses sent me out. I'm as strong as ever in battle. So give me this mountain that God promised me. You yourself heard the report of what I said that day, when the Anakim giants were there with their great fortress cities –‘ We are well able to overcome’ - If God goes with me, I will drive them out, just as God said. "Joshua blessed him and he gave Hebron to Caleb as an inheritance.

Hebron was the city where Joshua and Caleb brought back the grapes and the good report. The word Hebron means joined together – the opposite to the word badal – which means separation . Hebron was the place of David’s royal residence where he was anointed king and began that royal line that joined  Jesus to his Kingly Heritage. Hebron was the home of Abraham where the three angels appeared to he and Sarah and announced his inheritance of becoming the father of many nations, joining God to his people Israel.  God wants to give us our Hebron in these times of challenge – Nothing can separate us and like Caleb, we are well able to overcome.

In these days of pandemic the whole world is grieving the loss of so many elderly people and there is much care and compassion felt for them because of their vulnerability. It is a good thing that a younger generation feels this empathy and gives honour to their elders. But there is another side to this picture, and the eighty five year old Caleb is the message of hope and endurance, and fortitude and faith to all generations that follow on behind. I see daily in the eyes of many of my venerable (and often vulnerable) brothers and sisters the same message, the same report that Caleb gave of ‘Give me this mountain’. Yes there are giants in the Land but I have seen an inner strength in these people, won through faithfulness and patience and perseverance, and a wisdom that has aged like an oak tree. They remain as a shelter and a source of strength and loving comfort to the many younger people in their world, that they safeguard in their prayers and in their peaceful presence. This current Caleb generation is a is a sign board in these days that announces victory and not defeat. It is a testimony of God’s faithfulness.

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THE NARROW GATE We are offered a choice in life to go down one of two pathways, the pathway to life or the pathway to destruction or ruin. There are many metaphors of this choice in the Bible, starting in Deuteronomy when God offers Israel a pathway to life or a pathway to death, one of blessing and one of cursing. Paul talks in the epistles about walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh, and also about the spiritual mind and the natural mind. In the following Scripture Jesus speaks about the narrow gate and the wide gate. The narrow gate leads to a fulfilled life and the wide gate leads to a destroyed or wasted life. We have one lifetime on this earth and it does not have to be wasted. This choice lies before us all the time.

Matthew 7:13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate to destruction (ruin, waste) is wide and the way is easy that leads to it, and many enter in by it. But the gate that leads to life is narrow and the way is hard, and those who find it are few. 

When we enter through the narrow gate we enter into THE LIFE. When we enter in through the wide gate we can enter into A LIFE. There are two words for life in the New Testament in the Greek language, Zoe and Psyche. Zoe is spiritual life – that means Eternal life. Psyche is the word for soul and that means a soul life or a sense life including the experience of our five physical senses. We can experience both of these lives, because we are spirit, soul and body. Entering into THE LIFE is Eternal life – zoe - we are in the most fulfilling place we can be, within the fulness of God’s life. In this place are able to manage every other aspect of our life because of our hope and expectation of God working with us and within us.

When we enter in through the wide gate we can enter into A LIFE (psyche) which we choose and which is short term and where all things pass away (lead to destruction or waste) (apolleia – used about 15 times in the New Testament as ruin, loss or waste, not as hell). We are talking about a here and now lifetime on this earth, either as a time of spiritual fulfillment, conscious that we have God with us in every aspect of our life, or a life of relative or mediocre fulfillment and conscious of experiencing the waste of time, money, effort and concern. 

The wide gate The wide gate can be as wide as a person wants it to be where a diverse number of scattered non-defined ideas and activities go back and forth through the gate and don’t last very long. The wide gate can be narrowed down as much as people want in order to focus on their ideologies or meaningful activities that have intensity but still have a limited energy that fades or wastes away.  Most people would settle for a relatively fulfilling earthly life entering through the wide gate if there were some worthwhile goals and sufficient focus (EG, family life, or success at work or at other skills or creative pursuits – they put themselves through relatively narrow gates and feel they are who they want to be in that space). But through that wide gate there is will also be a logjam of stress and disorder because other random and unpredictable things always get in the way and lead to too much scattered focus. So let us look at focus.

Focus – wide gate focus and narrow gate focus Matthew 6:22 The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is single (haplous -  sharply defined - focussed), your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad (ponerous – corrupted, unclear), your whole body will be full of darkness… In the physical realm, our eyes get drawn to what grabs our attention – a shiny object. But seeing does not only mean physical eye sight. Seeing something can mean understanding something conceptually or at a deeper level seeing something spiritually. This is spiritual vision enlightens the mind and soul, and the heart… This is where focus is important as we can only physiologically or conceptually or spiritually focus on one thing at one time. A Personal worldview is an individual's philosophy about how life should be and about what forces influence human living. That is what takes their attention and gives them their personal perspective – A POINT OF VIEW! People have been taught one way or another many different stories of what life is all about and they get drawn to certain values and persuasions through what is affecting them in the circumstances that they are in. But because the gate is wide and there is too much distraction their vision becomes scattered instead of focussed.  This can cause us to fail to see what we need to see even if it is right in front of us. We are going to look at a situation where a physical focus can seriously affect a conceptual focus. The basketball players on stage and invisible gorilla - Daniel Simons experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

The Narrow Gate - Our Goal When we enter in by the narrow gate and our eye is single it is like a spiritual laser beam. Laser beams can have what is called a coherence or wholeness of one or more kilometre without scattering, and so entering by the narrow gate allows us to get an eternal quality of accurate vision to know what we need to avoid focussing on because it is a distraction to staying faithful to God’s will for our lives., for what he wants us to see. We are given grace to see what is going on and what is going wrong so that we can take responsibility. We can replace the unhelpful for the purposeful and meaningful. The Holy Spirit draws people towards Jesus, expressing the heart of the Father who draws us to his Son, and draws us away from other distractions and influences.  John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth… he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine;

We are being trained by God in the spirit, the soul and the body.  1Thessalonians 5:23 May the God of peace sanctify you completely (set you apart completely for God’s purpose – His goals for your life), spirit soul and body… Spirit – Revelation to bring light and truth. Soul   -  Light and truth to bring Love peace and joy. Body  - Wholeness – to bring rest recovery and restoration. (Vagus nerve stimulation from the brain to the plexus points of the body)

That is the part of the power of what I call Presence Prayer where we are trained by The Holy Spirit to learn focus.  Presence prayer is sitting quietly focussed upon the love and goodwill of God towards us, his thoughts and intentions for us and his work in the supernatural world of the unseen on our behalf. This is surrendered faith, cooperative faith, shared faith with God.

When we focus on the life of the Spirit we inhabit that place of communion with Jesus and the Father and Holy Spirit. Their thoughts towards us then become the influence upon our life. We get their point of view. This needs to be connected to a present moment reality that is always available – feelings might come and go and time might pass away, but zoe life and God’s Eternal time (kairos) never disappear, they remain coherent and whole. At the narrow gate there is a two-way flow of exchange of zoe life between us and God because of our mutual clear focus of shared intention to be there for one another. We are there for Him and He is there for us. Remember Father’s love for you is as great as it is for Jesus – you are one in the bond of the love of The Holy Spirit. See yourself as part of their circle of love. You are not an outsider, you are an insider. Anything less than that is not the Gospel (Hebrews 4:16). See yourself standing in a prayer huddle with Father, Son and Holy Spirit and receive their faith, and believe.  This is part of presence Prayer.  Romans 8:25 the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts (Jesus) knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. When you are focussing on God with that single eye of faith God is focussing on you as the apple of his eye. Psalm 17:8 Keep me (that means shield and protect me) as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wing… 

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FINDING MEANING A life without meaning is a life without hope because it means not moving forward to higher things but just going around in futile or unnecessary things. It is important to know that we are being led forward by God on a journey into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. When Israel was taken out of Egypt and led by Moses through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land they found themselves on a journey of discovering the meaning of their life and purpose, and there are lessons for in us these days that we can learn from how they reacted to the challenges of enormous change and disruption so that we can be led by God into our destiny.

1Corinthians 10:1 I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about Israel in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. They drank from the spiritual rock that travelled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and many died in the wilderness. Nor should we put Christ to the test, and don’t grumble as some of them did. These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to instruct us who live at the end of the age.

It was too hard for Israel, on the inside, to totally to leave the situation they had been in because it meant too much change. When they got to the Red Sea they were too afraid to go across but God did the miracle of parting the waters and they went through. They were also too afraid to enter straight into the Promised Land almost two years later because they saw themselves as helpless grasshoppers in the face of the giants in the land (except for Joshua and Caleb – 10 spies saw nothing but danger and threat and that caused the people to rebel and refuse to go in - Joshua and Caleb saw nothing but fruitfulness and marvellous potential and triumph). So God told Moses that they would wander for another thirty eight more years – forty all together. The actual trek from where they came out of Egypt to Kadesh Barnea, which is the entrance point into the Promised Land can be hiked in eleven days!- by a hiker, not two million people walking slowly (It is across the top of the triangle that is the Sinai Peninsula) However God led them to Kadesh Barneaby their following the cloud of the Holy Spirit on a particular route down to the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula and back up again. That was the two-year part of the journey during in which time he challenged their faith and trust in him by testing their attitudes and reactions to real life survival challenges. It would have been like a reality TV survival show where all the worst attitudes in the survivors come to the surface. They went without water for three days and complained bitterly to Moses against God - so God did the miracle where Moses strikes the Rock with his rod bringing forth water (Christ the Rock releases the living water of the Holy Spirit to us). They despised the miracle food called manna that God provided for them and complained that it didn’t taste as good as the food they had in Egypt. They gave up on God when Moses disappeared for six weeks up on top of Mt. Sinai to get the Commandments on tablets of stone, and they made the idol of the golden calf. From the time that God had Moses go to Pharaoh and say ‘let my people go’ and then to go through all the plagues and warnings to Pharaoh who finally said ‘get out of here’ it was at least forty days. The saying goes; It took forty days to get Israel out Egypt but it took forty years to get the Egypt out of Israel. This meant an unnecessary going around for forty years instead of going forward and going straight in to their land, but they had to learn the meaning and purpose of God for them as a people and that had to wait for the next generation who went into the land under Joshua and Caleb. Their journey was an example and a warning for us in our generation about not coming to a standstill and going round and round without a sense of meaning or purpose, but going forward in that purpose of God as his people. The world today is experiencing a time of crisis of endurance and survival where many things have come to a standstill, and many people are going round and round, having lost a sense of meaning and purpose in these challenges. We are on a journey with God. This is a time for us to pause and assess where we are individually and as God’s people and to assess where we are going. It is important to know that we are being led forward into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. It is also important to know what we have to do to find meaning on this journey. It means wanting to be where we are going more than staying where we are, and not going round and round as Israel did for forty years.

A life without meaning is a life without hope. Finding meaning in life is an inner experience of pursuing our highest spiritual goals. For us this means finding partnership with Jesus in every challenge of our life’s journey. The challenge becomes magnified when we are experiencing totally unforeseen situations that require radical change, and the world is in that kind of situation at present.

We face challenges like survival against an invisible virus, managing an economy that has been overburdened with unanticipated demands upon resources, because the workplace is being demolished. This creates a sense in people of a lack of meaning We face challenges like the devastating emotional and mental consequences of the hopelessness and confusion and despair of so many needy people. Lack of meaning

Politicians are overwhelmed with such grave responsibilities and many are so preoccupied with grasping for political survival that they are making dangerous errors of judgement, like inviting interference from Communist China to inveigle us into disastrous alliances. Lack of meaning.

Attempts by people at various levels of government and by political activists to manipulate the uncertainties of our social situation because of special interest ideologies are both foolish and sinister. Ideologies go wrong when people apply an intense narrow focus on things which are not the big picture. Lack of meaning

Many people including some Christians have gone into denial with conspiracy theories that beggar belief, and saying that the virus is a hoax, and ignoring or scoffing common sense precautions. Lack of meaning.

Many regular people who were managing things well enough now find things unmanageable because these challenges have not been faced before. Lack of meaning and sense of futility (giants in the Land) So for many, the entire situation can appear to have little or no meaning.

That means getting new perspective and understanding and wisdom. It means finding deeper faith, deeper courage and deeper meaning in what we do. But there is meaning in everything that happens in God and we can find that meaning. Reality never disappears when you work at what is real and not just imagined. So, are we going forward or just going around? We have everything we need to go forward and find meaning in everything we do.

Here are three pathways for finding meaning in challenging circumstances;

Creative action – When God created the world the Bible says it was without form and void. God brought order into this disorder, or chaos through his Word. We have that creative Logos within us giving us the faith to bring God’s creative order out of disorder. Whenever we do something out of the creative spiritual gift or ability given to us by God we act with that same reordering action of faith! It is a scientific fact that anything left to itself unattended deteriorates or corrupts into a state of disorder- the atomic and sub atomic nature of particles in material things causes them to perish either from the inside out or the outside in. It is the same with things that we have to attend to, like in our relationships or wise self-management of our health or finance or material possessions, we are bringing order out of chaos or disorder, and that is always a meaningful thing to do. We live in a world that has fallen into disorder and corruption in so many ways. It requires energy and action and willingness to be part of the reordering of life in this world and you are called to be a part of that. God is a God of order. 2 Timothy 1:7 –Not fear (deilia- intimidation) but Power and love and an ordered mind.

Enduring suffering – Finding hope and strength in times of stress or loss or anxiety or weakness or sickness. This is where miracles of faith happen because Jesus is always with us in those times. That is what having a Saviour is all about, a rescuer in stormy and perilous times

Matthew 14:24 Meanwhile, the disciples were in trouble far away from land, for a strong wind had risen, and they were fighting heavy waves. About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. In their fear, they cried out, “It’s a ghost!” But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage. I am here!” Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.” “Yes, come,” Jesus said. So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted. Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. “You have so little faith,” Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?” When they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped.

Recall the times that Jesus has rescued you in the storms - and expect that to continue.

Loving care – It was out of love that God created us and it is his love that gives meaning to our lives. There was great meaning for God in creating the universe but what had greatest meaning for God was creating you out of his overflow of love. You were adopted (placed in his family) alongside of Jesus. John 17:26 I I will continue to make your name known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them…vs.23…and you have loved them even as you loved me. The Father loves us a much as he loves Jesus. That is his secret weapon for transforming our lives, not force or coercion but knowing his love. knowing the greatness his love for us not only gives our personal lives our greatest meaning but it makes loving others more meaningful. Caring for the needs of others in family or extended family, friends or strangers that come across your path gives our lives together its Real Meaning.

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PRISONERS OF HOPE I want to speak today about the hope that can be found during times of uncertainty when many have lost hope and are grieving that loss. I am framing this within the time frame of Israel trying to find their way forward and still floundering after being in captivity in Babylon for seventy years. The prophets at that time knew that God was preparing them for a new hope and were encouraging and challenging them to prepare for that time. Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi all wrote to Israel before there was a four hundred years of silence during which time there was no king and no prophetic voice until the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations about the hopelessness felt by Israel in bondage in Babylon during their time of standstill as God’s people. They had lost all sense of a future and were grieving their past. They needed to find hope. For almost two generations they had been oppressed by cruel leaders of other nations and many had put their hope inother gods of other nations, and many had felt that God had abandoned them, but he hadn’t. Jeremiah captures their mood in the following Scripture from the book of Lamentations. Lamentations 3:11 He has dragged me into the underbrush and torn me with his claws, leaving me bleeding and desolate. He has bent his bow and aimed it squarely at me, and sent his arrows deep within my heart. He has filled me with bitterness and given me a cup of deepest sorrows to drink. He has made me eat gravel and broken my teeth; he has rolled me in ashes and dirt. O Lord, all peace and all prosperity have long since gone, for you have taken them away. I have forgotten what enjoyment is. All hope is gone; my strength has turned to water, for the Lord has left me. Oh, remember the bitterness and suffering you have dealt to me! For I can never forget these awful years; But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

The prophecy of Zechariah about being prisoners of hope speaks to us today, just as it spoke then to Israel. It is a prophesy of renewed hope. Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.

This is being set free from a dungeon of disappointment and returning to God’s prison of hope in him.

Disappointment has to do with what we expect of life, of ourself, and of others. This can lead to a wrong hope because we can have wrong expectations of all these things. Our only true hope is because of a true expectation of God. Our hope is not based upon what we can do, or others – Our hope is based on what God does do and is doing. Our faith is the foundation of this hope. Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance (foundation - hypostasis) of things hoped for, the evidence of things (deeds-pragma) not seen. That means the things (deeds) that God is doing in the world of the unseen, what he is doing! That is what our faith is, and that is what our hope stands upon. Our hope is not always reliable when it is in something we want to have. Our hope is always reliable when it is in Someone who gives us what he wants us to have, doing the good thing (deed) for us. Faith is not trying to believe as hard as we possibly can, that God will give us what we want to see happen – that can be a wrong expectation and lead to disappointment and lead to giving up on God. Our faith undergirds our true hope in God, that he will do his good thing (deed) that is his will for us. So what do we expect from God concerning his prison of hope, and not living in the dungeon of disappointment.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of grief, to give you a future and a hope. Psalm 139:17 How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking (purposefully) about me constantly! I can't even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me! (God’s thoughts are about his deeds that he will to do for us in the world of the unseen, the world of faith – which reinforces our hope). Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.

It is not the circumstances that defeat us. It is our reactions to them that defeat us – we lose sight (faith) of God. Our stress or discomfort or frustration can awaken us to hear the message of hope and to put our hope in God.

What does our future hope depend upon? Our future hope does not depend on our controlling our circumstances. Our future hope does not depend upon what we have failed in in the past that may dash our hopes for the future. Our future hope makes us ready for action.

1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, preparing your minds to be ready for action (not reaction), and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We take on a mindset of moving forward in God’s empowering grace. That means that when God reveals to us what his is doing, and that is seen in the circumstances he places before us after we have surrendered a situation into his hands. We then are empowered to respond to that in a God given faith that Holy Spirit gives to us. Remember what Jeremiah said in that last part of Lamentations;

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord

Our future hope depends upon how we are responding to what is – now. Miracles become familiar occurrences with The Holy Spirit composing and arranging situations with supernatural creativity beyond our ability to organize them. It is not so much seeking these things, but expecting them - our hope is imprisoned in God. He is in this situation, and is with me in this situation, and is transforming me, and is transforming my future.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

This is waiting for us to take hold of, in every challenge that seeks to rob us of a true hope. Get yourself into this hope – it is the true understanding of your faith!

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PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

Twelve years after the rebuilding of the walls and gates of the city at Jerusalem had been accomplished the prophet Malachi wrote the last prophetic book of the Old Testament. God’s people now had all they needed to present themselves to the world as a people of God who would be a testimony to the fact that an all loving, all powerful, just and good God was alive in the Heavens. They had rebuilt the altar of sacrifice, laid the cornerstone and true foundation and rebuilt the temple, then re-established the Word of God through Ezra and the priests, then rebuilt the walls and gates of the city, and everything looked so good. There had been such a lot of ‘rise up and build’ on the outside - but unfortunately there had been very little ‘rise up and build’ on the inside that God wanted from them.

Prophets like Haggai and Zechariah’s had been speaking a message of the coming of the Messiah and the completion of the temple (516 b.c). And now a mere twelve years after the completion of all the gates and walls and temple there came the final prophesy of Malachi, who was also prophesying that The Messiah would come to this completed temple. Here is the key verse;

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord (Messiah) whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

You would have thought that now was the time for something wonderful to happen, but nothing wonderful happened – everything stopped, came to a standstill. There Then there was time of silence for four hundred years – a prophetic pause! The next prophet to speak was John the Baptist. What does a time of silence of four hundred years speak of? What does a prophetic pause like this mean? It speaks of preparing the way of The Lord even in a time of scarceness and insufficiency with a full hope and expectation for something wonderful to happen. I believe we are in a global prophetic pause in this current global catastrophe. But the pause is full of the purpose of God, and a moving forward in the purpose of God, with the promise of worldwide Holy Spirit activity.

So, There was a silence of four hundred years after the final word from Malachi, no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. Then something wonderful happened – John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus. There was also a silence of four hundred years from the time God’s people became slaves in Egypt and then became free, and during that time there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. Then something wonderful happened. God set Israel free to be led on a journey to the Promised Land.

A four hundred years experience is a time of preparation, the time of expectation for something wonderful to come, while at the same time knowing that things should and could be a lot better now. A four hundred years experience in the Old Testament does not have to be a literal four hundred years in the New Testament (Kairos prophetic time). It simply indicates a time of preparation, a time of expectation, and of waiting for God to presence himself among us.

Paul told us that what Israel went through in the forty years in the wilderness was a prophetic pause for them to be ready to go into the promised Land. He spoke of Israel in their forty year wilderness experience as an example for us of learning how to trust God individually and corporately so as to enter into the fulness of the promise of God in Christ. For us that obviously doesn’t mean forty years – it means the challenges of faith and trust in God that can be jammed into whatever time frame God has to get our attention, to get our response. 1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

This preparation time of waiting and expectation for us becomes the time of understanding how we can be part of the preparing of the way of The Lord, for the powerful presence of God to come, in His time. There are also things we need to attend to that we may need to change, or at least get done with more faith and understanding and revelation from The Holy Spirit. who is our anointed teacher (1John 2:27).

The next prophet to speak after Malachi four hundred years later was John the Baptist, spoken of in Malachi as Elijah, a messenger to prepare the way for the other Messenger who was Jesus the messenger of the New Covenant. Can we presume this ? Jesus said it! Matt. 11:13 “For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.

The Holy Spirit as our anointed teacher instructs us in the way we should go and challenges when we need course correction through neglect or distraction and inspires us when we need motivation to reach a higher spiritual vision – they needed prophets, we have the Holy Spirit. And at that time the anointed prophet Malachi begins to set a higher goal for God’s people by addressing the priests, who were not honouring God and had become corrupt. Worship had become routine and unfaithfulness in marriage was widespread. Their vision had to be lifted higher. Social justice was being ignored and tithing was neglected. “Will man rob God?” the Lord asks (3:8), and he promised to “open the windows of heaven” (v. 10) if they honoured Him in this way. Malachi assures his people that God knows those who fear him and those who do not. now let us look at seven things that Malachi said God’s people would need to attend to for that time of preparation to be fruitful. Malachi was actually seeking to set their vision higher for their sakes, not just to admonish them in their insufficiency. God sets our vision high because it the most efficient way to inspire us to embrace a life full of meaning and purpose. The most positive emotion we can experience physiologically is that of pushing toward the highest most worthwhile goals (emote = Pootho’ Grk = push forward). God created us with a neurological hormonal pathway from a certain part of our brain, the Hypothalamus that stimulates and motivates us into a sense of purpose and meaning when we aspire to higher goals. A substance called dopamine is released and energizes our entire motivational attitude when we set our heart on achieving what is worthwhile and meaningful to us (in fact the artificial administration of this substance makes a person feel that whatever they are doing seems amazingly meaningful – thus the popularity of illegal recreational drug taking. But God always has something for us to aspire to that is full of his reality and purpose for our lives.

Seven pathways of preparing the way

1. Preparing the way as a priest in the role and example of worship and instruction and faithfulness because a priest was a ‘go-between’ from God to His people. Angels could bless people and mediate the Old Testament Law but they are not authorized to preach the Gospel ( and many strange religions have claimed angelic revelation- the warning of this is in Galatians). Malachi 2:1 Listen, you priests—The words of a priest’s lips should preserve knowledge of God, and people should go to him for instruction, for the priest is the messenger of the Lord. But you priests have left God’s paths We are ALL his priests and able to give Words of life as God’s messengers of hope in a bleak and disheartened world. (1Peter 2:9 …you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood). So who gets us back on the path, the Holy Spirit, who makes the truth of God’s word alive to us so that we can make it live in other people.

2. Preparing the way as bridge-builders of trust in God’s Covenant. Malachi 2;10 Are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God? Then why do we betray each other, violating the covenant of our ancestors? We can see all of humanity as belonging to God the Father, and we can be bridge-builders of trust in a world where many people are polarized because of tribalism and identity politics. Holy Spirit can give us wisdom when we become engaged in conversation with people who are being overwhelmed with all the negative talk they are hearing these days, and the abusive criticism they see people attacking one another with constantly on TV or radio. Mark 4:24 Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; We have the choice of what to have multiplied within us.

3. Preparing the way through loving relationships Malachi 2:14 You cry out, “Why doesn’t the Lord accept my worship?” I’ll tell you why! Because the Lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her. God honours faithfulness in marriage and wants to see healing in our land because of the wounding caused by unfaithfulness. He wants to see faithfulness in all of our relationships and because we are His beloved as His bride we have a special work of the Holy Spirit releasing a loving faithful response back to Him from our hearts -what an aspiration!

4. Preparing the way through showing justice and mercy Malachi 3;5 I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans…says the Lord. True leadership is demonstrating integrity and honesty and mercy in the workplace. When we work as unto The Lord he resources us and rewards the work of our hands (Colossians 3:23) God’s people can be blessed in the workplace in their faithfulness and their faith and be seen as givers and not takers of all God given blessings. We are here to be blessed and to bless.

5. Preparing the way by embracing trials of faith Malachi 3:1-3 I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver… Malachi is talking to the priests again here (that’s us!) and we can only pass on to others what we have actually received from the Lord and then we have the authority declare the purposes of God – and you will do that by living out the purposes of God.’ That comes by embracing the trials of faith that purify our hearts, knowing that they transform us into his likeness, which is the gold that speaks of the nature of God. (1Peter 1:7).

6. Preparing the way by honouring God financially and materially Malachi 3:8-12 Should people cheat God? Yet you have cheated me! “But you ask, ‘What do you mean? When did we ever cheat you?’ “You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of Heaven. “Then all nations will call you blessed, New Testament tithing is a willing response of grace filled gratitude for God’s provision. It is not a legalistic way of earning God’s blessing or negotiating a deal with God. We do not tithe to an Old Testament levitical priesthood. We tithe out of grace to Jesus our Melchidisek priest. In all my years of ministry I’ve never believed in putting people under the law in this truth because no human pressure or manipulation should touch this this act of faith. I have been blessed to witness the response of many hearts of such and grace, and seen the blessing of God upon that. Hebrews 7:8 Here mortal men (Levites) receive tithes, but there (Heaven) He (Jesus) receives them, and that is our witness that we believe that he lives. (I have expanded on this special priesthood of Jesus in Commandment eight in my podcast on the Ten Commandments – click the link at uncreated.podbean.com )

7. Preparing the way through family harmony and honour. This is the final Word for us to hear and respond to in our time of silence, our time of hope and expectation to see the blessing of God upon this world. Malachi 4:1 The Lord says, “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse. (So let there come a blessing and not a curse upon our land)

In these times in which we live this is not only a word spoken by Malachi in the very last verse of the very last book of the Old Testament about Elijah/John the Baptist – it is the Word being spoken to us in these days. Jesus has made us one with Himself and with His Father. That was his great work to make us a part of his family. We have the power of The Holy Spirit drawing us into his family bond of love with them and with one another.

These times of challenge are the times to expect to see the blessing of the healing power of Jesus for families in spirit, soul and body. Pray for reconciliation to happen in families to bless our land of hope and faith and love. There may be ones who feel they have reached out and done all they can, and what more can be done? Remember – We keep our hearts aligned with God’s and It is God who turns the hearts of people. God wants to bring this final blessing upon the earth in these days.

Malachi’s message is in the context of preparing the way for the Father’s heart of blessing to be received by his children And now Malachi writes. The opening statement from God through Malachi (Ch 1:2) is in the context of a loving Father whose inheritance is not being appreciated. He uses the illustration of Jacob and Esau, where Jacob regarded the inheritance and Esau did not. Then a few verses later (CH1:6) God says ‘A son honors his father, and a servant respects his master. If I am your father and master, where are the honor and respect I deserve? You have shown contempt for my name! 10 How I wish one of you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord.’ The theme of the honour due to a father is not only spoken of in the first few verses of the book, the aggrieved fatherhood theme is also emphasised in the centre of the book where God speaks as the Father/Creator of all of humanity. Malachi 2;10 Are we not all created by the same God? Are we not all children of the same Father? Then why do we betray each other, violating the covenant of our ancestors? The theme of the honour due to a father is also the theme of the last verse of the book (Ch4:6) I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse. In the last few verses of this book Malachi speaks of judgment and of blessing to come, and so it commands the attention of everyone who reads it.

As in the previous accounts of this reset and rebuild of God’s people after a strange time of standstill and disorientation, there are parallels to the Church in this strange time in which we live, in a time of standstill and disorientation. The Church today appears to have all it could need in the form of resources such as churches and worship and leaders and helpers and programs and marketing, but is God calling for something more? What we want and need is the presence of God in our midst, rather than just the presence of all the sincere and wonderful human ability and performance and Bible knowledge in our midst.

From the first few verses of this book Malachi’s purpose was to assure his people that God still loved them and was keeping his Covenant with them (Ch.1:2-5 - "I have loved you," says God. But you say, "In what way have you loved us?). Malachi tells us throughout the book that God calls for respect and honor, and faithfulness and love.

But my name is honored by people of other nations from morning till night. All around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings in honor of my name. For my name is great among the nations,” says the Lord.

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WALLS AND GATES OF SAFETY

The story continues of God’s people returning from the seventy years captivity in Babylon and the rebuilding the temple and now, the walls and the city gates of Jerusalem. This entire story is like a second Exodus of Israel coming out of captivity and entering into the Land, with this re-entering taking many long years like the first Exodus. This re-entry spanned the reigns of three kings in Babylon and Persia, with many delays and disruptions because of the enemies in the region. Zerubbabel led the first wave of returning exiles out of Babylon and some years later there came the arrival of Ezra for the rebuilding of God’s Word into the peoples’ hearts. The Temple had now been built, the sacrifices were now being offered, the Word of God had now been restored, but there were still no walls and gates of safety and security for God’s people and they were still open to enemy attack. So now God sends Nehemiah to return from Babylon to oversee the rebuilding the walls and gates of the city. This was the final work needed for the reset and rebuilding of God’s people as his witness to the nations. So we see again in this continuing story the parallels of Israel experiencing a reset after their world had come to a standstill and the Church today preparing to experience a reset just as our world has also come to a standstill in this global crisis we are living in today.

Just as God moved the hearts of world rulers and intervened sovereignly in history for his people under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Ezra, God now moves history for Nehemiah through the Persian King Artaxerxes to finish the rebuilding of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem. He uses these unlikely allies to fulfil His promises of restoration for His people.

It was the task of Nehemiah to see both the restoration of the walls and the rebuilding of the gates of those walls. Nehemiah 1:3 "Those who are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is still broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire." The lack of walls around the exiles who had returned from captivity over those last few years meant that they were living an unprotected life in the sense that they were allowing alien and sometimes hostile influences from the outside world around them to bring confusion into their lives. It also meant that they allowed themselves to wander out into the surrounding regions where corrupt cultural values and practices caused many of them to be enticed into an ungodly lifestyle. Nehemiah 2:17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision… The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build Nehemiah returned and had to teach the people how to build and how to fight the enemy at the same time, and the enemy’s tactics were sometimes subtle and sometimes brutal. They were being discouraged, and their values being despised and mocked. Sanballat, who was one of the leading adversaries of Israel’s return and rebuilding was continually conspiring to hinder the work and spoke these words of derision to the work of Nehemia;

Nehemiah 4:1-6. "What does this bunch of poor, feeble Jews think they are doing?" he scoffed. "Do they think they can build the wall in a day if they offer enough sacrifices? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” 4 Then I prayed, "Hear us, O Lord God, for we are being mocked…..for they have despised you in despising us who are building your wall…So we built the wall… for the people had a mind to work.

This same thing happens to God’s people today and God wants his people to maintain rule over their spiritual and natural lives, and to rebuild the walls and gates of safety and security around their souls and minds. God is giving us spiritual authority in these days I believe, through faith in His Word and the empowering presence of The Holy Spirit. We are challenged in the Scriptures to maintain this authority. Proverbs 25:28 Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls. Notice in that prayer to God that Nehemiah called the wall ‘your wall’. The wall of faith that we build around us is God’s wall. They also had a challenging problem with all the broken down rubble left around from the old wall.

Neh 4:10 Then some of the leaders began complaining that the workmen were becoming tired; and there was so much rubble to be removed that we could never get it done by ourselves. (TLB) This speaks to us of the brokenness and vulnerability that our lives have suffered, but that is where God shows his miracle working power to redeem all the things in our lives that have been broken down. Satan tries to get us spiritually and emotionally fatigued by us walking around in our minds in the rubbish of our own past mistakes or failures. Our soul can become emotionally fragmented and our minds overcome with negativity and stress. These blows can turn healthy solid pieces of building blocks into rubble.

The spiritual building blocks that God builds into our lives make up the many diverse aspects of who we are, and the good news is that God takes all these experiences and turns them into fresh opportunities to look at the situation His way – The Holy Spirit is waiting to show us what God is saying to us in these experiences. He builds our wall – he surrounds us. Self destructive attitudes of fear can be changed into healthy attitudes of faith when they are placed in the safety of God’s walls of refuge. Psalm 32:7 You are my place of refuge, You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Nehemiah took all the rubble and recycled it into building material, just as God does with our lives, and even the dust and dirt and gravel was mixed with clay to make mortar for the stones. God won’t waste a thing! God turns our weaknesses into our strengths – to bind our wall together and to strengthen his wall for our lives. Nehemiah and all the people finally completed the work and rebuilt the walls and the ten gates that had been destroyed and burnt down. The gates were where the elders of the city sat and made decisions for the government of the city. There is also an individual gatekeeping ministry that we each can exercise in our coming in and going out through the spiritual and natural gates of our lives in this world in which we live at his critical moment in time. Having walls and gates does not mean living a life cut off from the world. It does not mean exclusivity but it does mean selectivity. When we look at the name and the nature of the ten gates that were rebuilt we can see a spiritual application in them for finding wisdom as to what we convey through our spiritual gates into and out of our lives. We can also find we are given gatekeeping occasions for helping others in their gatekeeping management decisions. The ten gates were in order; The Sheep gate, the fish gate, the old gate, the valley gate, the refuse gate (garbage gate!) the fountain gate, the water gate, the horse gate, the east gate, and the gathering gate.

Let us look at an example of a few of these gates; Some speak for themselves and only need a brief mention. The sheep gate speaks to us of always being open to the forgiveness and mercy of the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world for our sins. The fish gate speaks of the word of Jesus to his disciples to making us ‘fishers of men’ The old gate speaks of the established ways of God that never change in guiding our paths Jeremiah 6:16 Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths,where the good way is; and walk in it, The valley gate speaks of going through the valleys of grief and suffering in our lives. The refuse gate - garbage gate. Remember what I said earlier Satan tries to get us spiritually and emotionally fatigued by us walking around in our minds in the rubbish of our own past mistakes or failures. Get rid of that at the garbage gate. The fountain gate speaks of allowing the fountain of living water to spring up from our innermost being John 7:37 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive… This is the powerful flow of life of His Spirit The water gate is the actual cleansing of our spirit from the water of his Word. Ephesians 5:26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, The horse gate – This speaks of the power we have in spiritual warfare. Zechariah 10:3 and will make them like the powerful horse in battle. Job 39.25 He laughs at fear and is not dismayed;he does not turn back from the sword. he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!

The east gate. In Ezekiel the east gate faced towards the direction of the mount of olives, looking for the coming of the Lord in the end time. This gate is sealed shut until he comes. The gathering gate. This speaks of the calling together of the gathering of God’s people. We have experienced the Covid safety challenges to the keeping of this gate in these times in which we live. Nonetheless ‘unto him shall the gathering of the people be’ (Genesis 49:10)

Nehemiah 6:15 So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, knowing that this had been the work of God. 52 days is a very short time – but to see in Nehemiah chapter thee the names of all the people in there helping one another. I gave up counting them. We are to be like them, there with one another for on another. It is an attitude of being beside each other in prayer and care, in willingness to help in whatever way we can so that the same will be said of them, that just as in the verse we just read – All the nations round about them saw them rebuild the gates and knew that this was the work of God. It is our lives together here on earth revealing that there is a God in heaven.

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THE TEMPLE AND THE WORD

This is the continuing story of God’s people under Zerubbabel returning home to rebuild the temple that was broken down. This story also includes the later arrival of Ezra upon the scene, returning with up to two thousand more exiles, to be part of the rebuilding, but not of the temple his time, but of the rebuilding of God’s Word into the peoples’ hearts. There are parallels in this story of Israel experiencing a reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church today experiencing a reset as a witness for God in the Earth. Their world had come to a standstill just as the world we live in today is in crisis and has also come to a standstill. However there is no standing still in God’s purpose to rebuild and restore his people and to take them forward into his purposes.

God moved the hearts of secular world rulers (Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes moved history for Zerubbabel and Ezra and later Nehemiah) to allow, even encourage and help, the Jewish people to return home. He used these unlikely allies to fulfill His promises of restoration for His people. Proverbs 21:1 – “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.”

It was not only in the kings but in the officers, and the mostly indifferent bureaucracy where God moved men’s’ hearts for His purpose. This is also a time for us to encounter unlikely sources of blessing. This is the wonder of God really working all things together for the good of those who are called by His name. These are times for a new kind of expectation of the unexpected. These are times to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and mercy.

Zerubbabel had now laid the foundation of the temple. But there was no temple and there was no real city, and there were no walls – and that meant they were open to enemy attack, and they had to learn how to deal with that. Stories of the glory of Solomon's temple began to breed discouragement that they could never rebuild this temple as glorious as that one. It was now time to rebuild the temple, and the prophets Zechariah and Haggai encouraged Zerubbabel to get on with the work. It took many years to complete the building because there was the continual harassment of the enemies, and as yet there were no walls.

It is God’s heart to see his people dwelling together in unity where his presence resides with them and within their hearts. This is God’s home, his temple made up of people, called ‘living stones’.

The prophet Haggai speaks firmly and soberly to the people about their priorities. They had been preoccupied with giving more meaning to their own personal affairs instead of the will of God as being central for the meaning of their individual and corporate lives. God’s life matters. Here’s what Haggai says;

Haggai 1: 7 Consider your ways says the Lord. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

That rebuke then becomes an encouragement to them that he desires to be with them and will be glorified in them, and that means that their lives will express His life among them in an even greater way than he has in their past history ‘The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former’. He wanted them to identify as His people, His Nation and not scattered in a foreign land with a foreign culture. They were coming home- their home and His home. The following Scripture is a powerful encouragement for them then and for us now – It tells them that all nations will be shaken but they will be provided for… Haggai 2:1 Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.’

Haggai encourages Zerubbabel that God is with him in this work, just as The Holy Spirit is telling is that he is with us in this critical time – His Spirt is in our midst .God is bringing his people back into a rebuilding of their unity based upon the unity of the faith. The unity of the faith is simply the expression of the life of Christ being lived out individually and corporately wherever we are and whatever the cultural or traditional background we have.

There is a picture of the relational unity among us in the picture of the stones being cut to shpe for the temple. The stones in the temple had to be shaped. The stabilising wall was made of stones that were cut out and shaped at the rock quarry and brought into place to fit together without any mortar in between, sometimes rubbing the rough edges off each other – just like us in managing our own relationships with each other. God has to do a lot of work upon us, taking us out of one huge rock structure as big as a mountain and fitting us together, so we come out of our rock Christ, and get shaped by the Holy Spirit to take our place next to each other in Christ. That is what God is preparing us for in these days.

He then says ‘The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts’ so that the treasures of all nations shall come in. That is his message to all the world - that He is the possessor of the Heavens and the Earth, not the nations ruled by dictators who covet the wealth of other nations to wield more corrupt power in their oppression of millions upon millions of people. God is preparing a people who will express his justice and mercy and blessing. As I said before - Haggai Tells Zerubbabel that He will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and that He will shake all nations. So all of this work of rebuilding his people together to contain and to express his presence is being done in the midst of upheaval all over the world, and that is our experience at this very time. There is a special grace upon this coming together of a living temple. There is a grace for us to be in supportive prayer for one another and the healing of relationships. The Scripture said He will fill this house with greater glory, the expression of the life of Jesus within.

And now it is time for the rebuilding of the Word After a few years Ezra leads the second of three waves of returning exiles. Even though the temple was being restored and God was with his people it was time for them to be challenged by the Word that would bring personal growth to their lives, because by the time Ezra arrived, the people had again fallen into sin and allowed the values of the godless culture around them (not just the one back in Babylon) to influence their values and corrupt their consciences. Ezra preached God’s word and the people repented. There were close to two thousand people who went up from Babylon to Jerusalem for this mission. This next phase in the rebuilding of God’s people coming home was the inner rebuilding of their faith and faithfulness through his Word. This also speaks to us today, to live more deeply but simply in His Word to us. Paul told Timothy to study to sow himself approved, confident that he was correctly dissecting the Word of God (2 Timothy2.15)

Ezra 7:6 -10 Ezra was skilled in the Law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, and he succeeded for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

Ezra received favour from the Persian King’s officers and counsellors so that people of influence were willing to make a way for him to do what God has said, and God also put others who had a heart for God’s Word to be part of Ezra’s vision to see the Word of God renewed in peoples’ hearts. They were described as men of insight and faithfulness and discretion. Again we see God working on the hearts of those who do not know him, for His word to make its way to wherever God sends it and to do its work and not return empty.

Ezra 7:28 Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of the Lord my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.

In Ezra’s words, he declared his faith in God’s protection over him and all that accompanied him.

Ezra 8:22 For I was embarrassed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king that the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who abandon him.” So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty. And the gracious hand of our God protected us and saved us from enemies and bandits along the way. So we arrived safely in Jerusalem, where we rested for three days.

So this was a different kind of building that Ezra was asked by God to do. This was a time of the revival of the power of God’s word coming alive in the hearts of His people. This was a time of divine protection from the enemy, and it will be the same for us as we fight a good warfare. This is a time for us to join ourselves in prayer for all who believe and trust in God, that he will revive the hearts of the humble, and the spirits of those who have been oppressed. pray first that he will revive our hearts with the grace and faith to be the Ezras who make way for God’s Word to flourish in His House, His Home. His temple of living stones – to declare His Word to our world.

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RESET REBUILD

We shared last week about Israel returning home to Jerusalem after seventy years of being in bondage in Babylon, and now the 50,000 exiles are under the leadership of Zerubbabel who was in charge of the rebuilding of the temple which was destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar had demolished the city of Jerusalem . The first thing that they did was the rebuilding of the altar of sacrifice which launched them into a new future. I likened this reset for God’s people at that time to the reset we can prepare ourselves for at this moment in history Everything had come to a standstill for them –There are parallels in this story in Israel’s experiencing of a reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church’s experiencing of a coming reset of taking its place as a witness for God in the Earth today.

The next thing for Zerubbabel to do was to survey and lay down the foundation of the temple. There was not only no foundation and no temple there was no real city, and there were no walls – and that meant they were open to enemy attack, and they had to learn how to deal with that. Pressures that came from having to re-settle had drained their energies, and comparisons to stories of the glory of Solomon's temple began to breed discouragement that they could never rebuild this temple as glorious as that one, if at all.

Where do you start? It is hard to get started when there is discouragement. But they knew they had to just start. They were facing a time of enormous change but they had started with the right project – the altar of sacrifice, and then came the temple foundation, and after that there would be the temple. It was going to be hard work, and that never changes because hard work will always be hard work, but what does change is our faith. That is based on knowing that God is with us and God is for us, no matter what comes against us. Zechariah who was a prophet of Judah at the time was directed by God to encourage and instruct Zerubbabel.

Zechariah 4:2-10 "This is God's message to Zerubbabel: `Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty-- you will succeed because of my Spirit, though you are few and weak.' 7 Therefore no mountain, however high, can stand before Zerubbabel! It will flatten out before you! You have laid the foundation of this Temple and you will finish building it with its capstone in its place shouting 'grace and thanksgiving' for God's mercy, declaring that all was done by grace alone. (Then you will know these messages are from God, the Lord Almighty.)"… Another message that I received from the Lord said: 10 Do not despise this day of small beginnings, for the eyes of the Lord rejoice to see the work begin, to see the plumbline in the hand of Zerubbabel.

FOUNDATIONS AND THE CORNERSTONES In relation to architecture, a cornerstone is traditionally the first stone laid for the foundation of a structure, with all the other stones laid in reference to that. The cornerstone marks the geographical location by orienting a building in a specific line of direction. I would like to read a Scripture from Isaiah is quoted in the Gospels and Epistles about Jesus being the cornerstone and foundation of the Church. Isaiah 28:16 Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will be ready.’ And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line;

THE FOUNDATION The Church is God’s living temple today, the Body of Christ, and Jesus is the foundation upon which our lives, individually and corporately are being rebuilt and restored. When the church shares the common foundational apostolic and prophetic truth of growing up together into His life we begin to occupy that precious ground of truth and are called to build upon that foundation. 1Corinthians 3:10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Part of the reset of the Church is the rebuilding together upon that foundation of apostolic and prophetic truth that brings the unity that is called the ‘unity of the faith’. Ephesians 4:13 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

The unity of the faith is not defined solely by articles of faith agreed upon by the different councils of the Church .These have been gifted to us through the centuries, because as true and substantial as these may be, they can tend to represent the ‘complete’ fund of the knowledge of God. I personally embrace these confessions of faith as part of sacred tradition, but I do not see them as exhausting the work of the Holy Spirit in leading us into ALL truth as he reveals Jesus to us through his word. The unity of the faith is simply the expression of the life of Christ being lived out individually and corporately wherever we are and whatever ethnic or cultural background we have. There have been times in the past when there was the need for the reset of reformation throughout the history of the church because of misleading doctrines of man made errors of emphasis or self serving agendas. There are doctrines based on valid Scriptures that are not necessarily part of that foundation in the sense that for the time being they remain veiled or obscure, like what will be the lifestyle management structure of the millennium? Arguments and uncertainties abound about these Scriptures that bring division, not unity. I have a real certainty about the millennium – It is that whatever the millennium will be, it will be nothing like what I would have imagined.

There are foundational doctrines that become distorted because they are more about ‘my will be done’ rather than ‘thy will be done’. The doctrine of the power of Jesus for forgiveness and salvation itself becomes narrowed and limited to a predestined ‘elect’. Doctrines of healing become demands of healing from God just by quoting a verse of Scripture at him, whether or not the person actually gets healed. I see a prayer for healing get answered when I see a person actually healed. God does these things of course when he WILLS them to be done. I do not see these failed acts of misled zeal as always the craftiness in deceitful schemes mentioned in that verse from Ephesians above, but rather as an incomplete understanding of faith. People get possessed by an idea, and it can be a good idea, but it is not a God idea, and the idea ends up possessing them They become possessed by an idea that brings agonizing striving for it to succeed and just as agonizing justification for its many failures. An idea is incomplete when it it’s manifestation in reality is not completed, and so that person’s faith life is incomplete. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and shared this concern with them. 2Corinthians 11:3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from the simple and pure devotion to Christ.

THE CORNERSTONE AND THE PLUMBLINE The plumb line touches the foundation spot on at the Cornerstone – Jesus. Everything becomes straight up and down when it comes from heaven to earth through Jesus and then touches us and goes back to Heaven through Jesus, without who we can do nothing, and through whom we can do all things. When the plumb line is dragged across to some point on the field of that foundation where one of those incomplete ideas of faith is energized by our urgency to see something supernatural happen that plumb line is not straight up and down anymore - there’s an angle. The plumb line speaks of the vertical touching of Heaven and earth and about how that can be measured in our lives. We are part of both Heaven and earth through Jesus and The Holy Spirit. The plumb line plumbs the depth of our alignment with The Holy Spirit’s revelation of God’s Word to us, and our harmony and devotion to Jesus. So that is both about the knowing of God through his Word and in the living out of his life within us. Not only do we need to ponder the wonder of receiving the life of Jesus into our lives, but more importantly to marvel at and deliberate upon the desire of Jesus to receive us into his life and to share with him in his loving and obedient life with The Father. Deliberate on the simple truth of who God is through the revelation of what the Word (Logos) says that HE says about HIMSELF. Jeremiah 9:24 I anyone wants to boast about anything let them boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and uprightness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

There are some things coming out of this that you can say to yourself about God; ONE – You love me with an everlasting love. That teaches me to love. TWO – Your justice means that I receive mercy and am accepted despite my shortcomings. Your justice also means that because you love me you will discipline me so that I can say ‘You are right (always) and I am wrong (mostly) – and that teaches me about repentance. THREE – Your uprightness means that you will always guide me in the path of your wisdom and truth and provide your best for my life. That teaches me about faith and trust in your supernatural work on my behalf in the world of the unseen.

The Cornerstone (the foundation stone, or setting stone) is where the plumb line from Heaven touches the foundation on the earth. Jesus is the Cornerstone of the foundation where Heaven touches the earth. That is where the perpendicular measurement is spot on. Any other place on the foundation can be pushed out of alignment! The closer you get to Jesus the better the reading. Many times in the Old Testament people placed a stone to mark a special place of orientation or remembrance of a work of God. Jacob placed his head upon an anointed stone and had the vision of a ladder reaching to Heaven. The anointed stone is the place where Heaven touches the earth.

God tells Zerubbabel that it is not by might or power or human strength but by the Spirit of God, that the work would be completed. He tells him to shout 'grace and thanksgiving' for God's mercy, declaring that all was done by grace alone. Grace means that it is not our power but the empowering presence of The Holy Spirit which flattens out the mountains before us. God tells Zerubbabel to ‘despise not the day of small beginnings for the eyes of the Lord rejoice to see the work begin,’. So make a start to reset and rebuild through grace and thanksgiving and see the work begin. I remember sharing to people in church some time ago about deliberating upon the desire of Jesus to receive us into his life and to share with him in his loving and obedient life with The Father, to deliberate on the simple truth of who God is through the revelation of what the Word (Logos) says that HE says about HIMSELF – his Steadfast love and justice and uprightness etc. and to do it for ten or fifteen minutes at a time - no prayer requests, just deliberating on God – meditation if you like. I though maybe I’m putting too big a yoke on these dear people. Then I found myself saying – Look, try it for ten seconds whenever you can. I was incredibly blessed to get feedback from someone who said that this had been lifechanging for them. We start NOW. The reason we procrastinate is that we despise small beginnings and never make a start because there’s always something more important to do – well not this time.

(What reason do you have to not accept Jesus as your best friend?)

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SACRIFICE After seventy years in Babylon God’s people Israel had been in bondage in a strange land. Everything had come to a standstill for them – an enforced seventy year Sabbath to give the land its rest. The Persian King Cyrus sends the exiles, fifty thousand of them, back to Jerusalem in 538 b.c. There are parallels in this story, in Israel’s experiencing of a return and reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church’s experiencing of a coming return and reset of taking its place as a witness for God in the Earth today. A man by the name of Zerubbabel was chosen then to lead the exiles back, and he was announced on their return to the Holy Land as the governor of Judah and sometimes referred to as ‘Prince of Judah’, as he was from the lineage of David. Ezra 1:1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation… The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord.

The seventy year standstill experience of the judgment upon Israel had led to a sense of disorientation and discontinuity, and a radical break with the past. In Babylon they were in virtual lockdown and they had lost all sense of a ‘future’, and now they were heading home - but there was no home. Their temple and their city had been left in ruins.

They couldn’t pick up from where they left off. There had to be a reset. Prior to their exile they were organized as the tribes of Israel, but now they were to be gathered in families and clans, and remnants of Benjamin and Judah, with the only full tribe left being the Levites, for the priesthood. This became the transition from the religion of Israel to that of Judaism. The first major event for them on their return was when the time of the year came for them to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, the feast of the yearly gathering of all the people as families. As for the rebuilding, they didn’t start with building the temple, or city walls or gates. They started with the very core of what God was calling for from them - the re-building of the altar of sacrifice. Zerubbabel and his clan, and the priests, led in the rebuilding of the altar on the exact place where it had once stood, and they sacrificed burnt offerings upon it, and voluntary or free will offerings. The Bible says that the foundation of the temple was not yet laid. That was next and that had to wait.

Ezra 3:1 … Zerubbabel (of the lineage of David) and his clan, rebuilt the altar of the God of Israel and sacrificed burnt offerings upon it. The altar was rebuilt on its old site, and it was used immediately to sacrifice morning and evening burnt offerings to the Lord; And they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles as prescribed in the laws of Moses, sacrificing the burnt offerings specified for each day of the feast… free will offerings of the people were also sacrificed… The foundation of the Temple was not yet laid.

I believe that our experience as the Church in the current worldwide pandemic of Covid 19 is a parallel in so many ways to the experience of God’s people back then in captivity. Life for them had suddenly come to a standstill leaving them for a long time without the same expectations and hopes and freedom and security of what used to be a normal life, plunging them into a sense of disorientation and discontinuity, and a radical break with the past – no temple worship - church for them. Today this sense of disorientation is invading the minds and hearts of people all over the world as it goes through the distress of this moment in history. Then it came time for Israel being called to a reset of their past because things would never be quite the same as they remembered and they would do a reset for their new future, and I believe we are also being faced with this same challenge. God was calling for them to return to the place where he has always met with his people – the altar of sacrifice. The first reset was to rebuild the Altar. That is what God is calling for from us. That is what our reset needs to be. The altar in our lives speaks of a life of sacrifice. A life of sacrifice speaks of a continual launching of the future into the will and purpose of God. Why?

A sacrifice involves giving up something now that will present to you something better in the future, whether it is spiritually, emotionally or materially. This is only done if you value what it is that you are sacrificing something for now. In the natural world if there were no sacrifice of time and effort and study or discipline there would be no advancement or betterment of self and character or any real life outcomes. There would be an empty future. God calls for sacrifice for our sakes, so that we can reach the future that he has created us for. He offers them to us - the greater the sacrifice the greater the hopes and the more blessed future – but HE has to make the offer to us (missionary).

Prior to their exile they were organized as the tribes of Israel, but in their reset they were to be gathered in families. The observance of the Feast of tabernacles for them back then was the celebration of the togetherness that Israel enjoyed as God’s family in the earth, and in our reset it is our celebration of being one Body in Christ like never before, as his family under the Father. They couldn’t pick up from where they left off. There had to be a reset.

Zerubbubel called for the offering of the burnt offerings and the free will offerings on that altar. There are many offerings, like the sin-offering, the peace offering. But the burnt offering and the free will offering had special meaning for them as it does for us today, in our time of reset. The burnt offerings speak of total commitment of our future to The Lord, and the free will offering speaks of thanksgiving and appreciation of what we have in The Lord, even when we experience loss and disappointment and we can give God thanksgiving in that situation, that free will offering brings about the all things working supernaturally together for good for us in that situation. This heart of sacrifice has to start at an individual level before it becomes visible at a corporate level.

It is a harsh reality that pain and suffering define the world we live in. The person who wants to alleviate suffering for themselves and for those in their world make the sacrifices necessary to do this. They become part of the answer to the pain and suffering we see in people today, because being there for one another in their suffering is a sacrifice that grows bonds of love and trust and releases the supernatural power of Jesus as the fulfillment of that sacrifice ( look at your situation right now in being there as a living sacrifice for others),.. There would be less suffering in the world if there were more people who valued the virtue of self-sacrifice toward God and for one another.

The first mention of the burnt offering in the Bible was not in Moses time of the priestly sacrifices – it was when Abraham was called to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. He gave his future back to God and put it into God’s keeping, or guardianship, and he showed mighty faith by believing that God would provide the sacrifice and bring forth a spectacular future upon the earth of all the families of the earth being blessed. Abraham’s future (and ours) was the life of his son Isaac. Then Isaac heard the words of Abraham; Genesis 22 – God will provide a lamb for the offering my son...God said now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. God also called upon himself to make the sacrifice of his only son and bring about the ultimate blessed future for all of us, and Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice to bring about this unsurpassable future for us to share with him here and now and for eternity. There was no other way. Paul wrote in Romans 12 for us to offer ourselves o God as a living sacrifice and When we say yes in faith to God regarding sacrifice he provides the sacrifice, his Son - and our future in God comes to pass his way. Our burnt offering for us is giving our future into God’s good will for us. Jesus is the completion of every task committed to him 2Timothy 2:12 which is why I am willing to suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed or disappointed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him until that Day.

We sacrifice when we put our hearts and minds and bodies into the appropriate hard yards that allow us to go forward in life. We persevere patiently through that slow work but then God does the quick work, the supernatural work that brings about his result, the best future. We say yes to the offering of sacrifice and just as with Abraham he says I have provided the lamb, that supernatural sacrifice of his Son, to complete the work of the sacrifice. We then rest in our faith and trust and hope in him, Jesus, and he takes us into our future, his future for us.

John 6:15-21 – Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He went back up again to the mountain by Himself alone, and when evening came he told the disciples to row to the other side ,(Matthew 14:25). His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid. But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going. They did the hard yards and Jesus completed the journey. We are in the boat rowing at the moment and it is scary

If parents support a culture that lets their children have everything they want and does not train them in self-sacrifice and sharing and contributing and accountability they will find themselves living in a generation that demands their rights and protests against any form of discipline and community responsibility. This is what is happening now.

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HOW THE REST WAS WON Exodus 17:7 the people of Israel had argued against God and provoked God by saying, "Is Jehovah going to take care of us or not?". And now the warriors of Amalek came to fight against the people of Israel at Rephidim, so Moses instructed Joshua to issue a call to arms to the Israelites, to fight the army of Amalek.

‘Tomorrow, ‘Moses told him, "I will stand at the top of the hill, with the staff of God in my hand!" So Joshua and his men went out to fight the army of Amalek. Meanwhile Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. And as long as Moses held up the staff in his hands, Israel was winning; but whenever he rested his arms at his sides, the soldiers of Amalek were winning. Moses' arms finally became too tired to hold up the staff any longer; so Aaron and Hur rolled a stone for him to sit on, and they stood on each side, holding up his hands until sunset. As a result, Joshua and his troops crushed the army of Amalek, putting them to the sword.

Then the Lord instructed Moses, ’Write this into a permanent record, to be remembered forever, and announce to Joshua that I will utterly blot out every trace of Amalek.’ Moses built an altar there and called it ‘Jehovah-nissi’ (meaning ’Jehovah is my flag’). "Raise the banner of the Lord!" Moses said." For the Lord will be at war with Amalek generation after generation."

So let’s look at the background story to the lead up to this battle that Israel had with Amalek. Israel had been complaining continually that God was not looking after them and was no longer with them. There are ten major incidents spoken of where they provoked God concerning this complaint, and God acted from Heaven every time to either show himself as their savior and provider(crossing the red sea- feeding them with manna etc), or to bring judgment upon them for their rebellion and unbelief.

In this story the complaint that Yahweh was not with them and not caring for them came at the time of Israel’s first experience of warfare against another nation, the nation of Amalek. This was at a place called Rephidim. Rephidim means ‘The land of rest – hence the title of the sermon – How the rest was won…

Moses was told by God to take his staff and hold it up to God from on top of a mountain overlooking the battle of Rephidim. This was the staff that God told first Moses to take up when he spoke to him at the burning bush. It proved to be symbol of the faith and authority that God was giving to Moses to show that God was with him and would do mighty works through him for the salvation and provision of his people. God said to Moses; ‘what is that in your hand Moses’ which meant ‘what is it that you have within your grasp - your God given ability to do with your life as God would have you to do. In this story what God says to Moses he is saying to all of us. God then told him to throw it to the ground, whereby the staff turned into a snake that chased Moses who fled from it through fear, then God told Moses to turn and take up the snake and it became the staff of authority again. God says the same to us. When Moses let go of the staff of his faith and authority in God he invited the serpent in - to come after him to overcome his faith. The snake - from the beginning, speaks of deception and temptation and sin. Fear took over instead of faith. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12 to cast aside the sin that so easily besets you, or ensnares you. It is called the besetting sin and it is driven by some kind of fear. Moses appears to have had a fear of injustice that trapped him into having to get justice done in his own emotional strength instead of having faith in God to work justice. Moses fell into this trap a number of times in the Bible. The first time was forty years earlier when he killed an Egyptian because of the injustice being done to his fellow Israelites as slaves of Pharaoh – this got him into a lot of trouble and he had to escape and stay in hiding for forty years in Midian, where God finally came to him at this time at the burning bush. He did it later by disobeying God striking the rock twice instead of simply speaking to it as God told him to – again another angry outburst because of the injustice of Israel’s murmuring against God. That cost Moses his entry into the promised land.

But he turned ie repent and picked up the snake by the tail and faith and authority returned.

Moses was instructed to use this staff of faith and authority to perform the supernatural works in Egypt in turning the rivers to blood and bringing the plagues and judgments upon Pharaoh before Israel were set free from Egypt. It was that staff of faith and authority that Moses held over the red sea and the staff that he used obediently (on that occasion) to bring forth life-giving water from a rock. And now it was the staff of faith and authority that would win the battle for Israel against Amalek at Rephidim.

THE BATTLE. Moses had instructed Joshua to lead Israel in the battle, and whenever Moses held up the staff Israel under Joshua would overcome Amalek, but when Moses lowered the staff of faith and authority because his arms became weary then Amalek would start overcoming Israel. Aaron and Hur supported Moses arms and allowed him to sit down so that the staff of faith and authority kept Joshua in a winning position. This is an illustration of the power of prayerful intercession from those who support one another in times of spiritual challenge and warfare. Aaron was Moses brother and Hur was the son of Caleb. These were men that were both faithful to the purposes of God, for his will to be done. We can uphold our brothers and sisters as an Aaron and a Hur and we can know that we are being upheld as a Moses by them also. I expect to be upheld by my brothers and sisters in this way, just as I expect of myself to be effective for my brothers and sisters in my upholding them.

JOSHUA – This is the first time Joshua is mentioned in the Bible, and he is seen as the one who leads God’s people in this battle and saves and overcomes for them. They would not have been skilled soldiers at this stage but it was the skilled leadership of Joshua and the faith of Moses in raising his staff to Heaven that released the supernatural victory through Joshua, or Yeshua, which means savior and which is the same name as Jesus. This is how our faith operates. We, like Moses, take hold of our authority of the faith that we lift up to God, for him to be with us and care for us and to provide for us and for those we pray for. and Jesus is released in our hearts and he goes into action on our behalf.

WHAT WAS THE CONFLICT ABOUT? -The battle was to win the territory of REPHIDIM. ‘The place of rest’. That speaks to us of winning the place of the rest of faith in our hearts, knowing that Jesus does the fighting for us. When Jesus goes into action on our behalf the power of Heaven subdues all things on the earth that would try to prevent God’s will from coming to pass. Our faith is that Jesus is at work on our behalf to bring about the father’s good will to us.

WHO WAS THE ENEMY COMING AGAINST GOD’S PEOPLE? – Amalek went into war against Israel. Israel was the nation that descended from Jacob, who wrestled with God and would not let him go and whose name was changed to Israel which means ‘power with God’. Amalek was the nation that descended from Esau, who was Jacob’s brother. The Bible tells us in the New Testament (Hebrews 12) that Esau was not interested in the things of God, but in the things of the world. But Jacob valued the spiritual blessing of God and received that blessing instead of Esau, and this brought them into constant conflict. God is referred to in the Old Testament as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that speaks of the Trinity – Abraham the father, Isaac the Son, and Jacob speaks of the Holy Spirit.

THAT CONFLICT IS AT WORK WITH ALL OF US. We have the conflict of the Esau side of our nature that trusts in the things of the world and go after them, the Bible calls that the flesh - and we have the Jacob side of our nature that values the spiritual blessing and goes after that. The Bible tells us that our old nature of the flesh is always fighting against our new nature of the Spirit, and that Jacob side to us, the Spirit releases our Joshua, our Jesus going in to fight for us. and here we have the battle plan that wins for us the place of rest in our hearts and our minds and in our souls – our Rephidim.

GOD WANTS US TO BE FULLY CONSCIOUS OF THIS AT ALL TIMES. Then the Lord instructed Moses, ’Write this into a permanent record, to be remembered forever, and announce to Joshua that I will utterly blot out every trace of Amalek.’ Moses built an altar there and called it ‘Jehovah-nissi’ (meaning God is my battle flag of victory’). "Raise the flag of the Lord!" Moses said." For the Lord will be at war with Amalek generation after generation. One day when we see The Lord face to face there will be no more sin and temptation and the Old creation will have passed away and the New Creation will have finally come. But until then we are in this battle of Rephidim every moment of our lives.

This is the living out of the Gospel, the working out of our salvation to be who God wants us to be where he wants us to be doing what he wants us to do.

You will either be taking hold of your faith, as the staff that God has placed in your hands to do his will in your life, or you will be being chased by the serpent who will confuse your mind and emotionally trouble your soul and weaken your will and seek to get you to miss the mark in your faithful decision making to take you forward in life. You will know when the serpent is after you in the way I just described it, and that is when you turn, with faith and courage and pick that cunning thing up and lay hold of your faith again. Remember also to uphold your brothers and sisters and to know that you are being upheld by them also, when the weakness and weariness of our humanity bears upon us. God bless you all Amen.

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THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL INSIGHT INTO THE TRUE MEANING OF BLESSING

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REVOLUTION This century has been marked by global sociological confusion, political corruption, individual loneliness and profound spiritual pain and a sickness of soul. The world is in a global crisis of a sickness of body because of a viral pandemic. There have been other global crises over the last century such as WW1 and the Spanish flu, WW2 and atomic warfare, and now this, which is baffling the entire world regarding preventing it, treating it and how long it has to go. The world has come to a standstill.

Despite our unlimited access to knowledge and technology there is a general discontent with the false or unrealized promises that have been offered to society, leaving many feeling empty and unfulfilled. There is also a general distrust of the structures of leadership and systems of government and law and order. There is a feeling in the air is that there is a revolution coming – but what kind of a revolution. A revolution is the overturning of one kind of order to establish or re-establish another kind of order. There is an intense revolutionary feel in the violent and even non violent protests in our streets, and even moreso in the US and in Europe and Asia. Protesters are being driven by emotions and attitudes of rebellion deeper than and sometimes unrelated to the actual causes they stand for. Some people just want to rebel. This kind of disordered chaos has been experienced before many times in the earth and revolutions did happen. There have been many revolutions upon the earth –political, industrial, people power and religious – and scientific. But there was a quiet and orderly revolution that happened during the London plague of 1665 when a quarter of the population of London died. Isaac Newton was quarantined in isolation for one year (like and enforced Sabbath) and in that time discovered differential calculus and the laws of motion and gravity. There's a quote from Newton that came out of his experience - 'truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.' His science was a revolution in the world of science.

The next revolution may not be any of those. It may not start in the streets or cities, or in parliaments or halls of congress. It may not even start in the church. I believe it will start in Heaven – God wants to start his own revolution. It can hopefully then be taken up in the Church and then occur in all the other places. I want to read a Scripture about God starting his own revolution. The Scripture is about God starting his own revolution when Israel fell into moral and spiritual and social disorder, but it is also I believe about God’s revolution starting in our world, in our times, our prophetic Kairos times in the earth today. Ezekiel 21:25. (To Israel) You say you have agreed to my Covenant, but I call you to remembrance of your iniquity so that that I may deal with you… O King Zedekiah, prince of Israel, your day of reckoning is here. remove the mitre and your jeweled crown,"the Lord God says."The old order changes. Now I will humble the exalted and exalt the humble. I will overturn, overturn, overturn the kingdom, so that even the new order that emerges will not succeed until the Man who has a right to it takes his rightful place and I will give it all to him In that Scripture God intervened and sent a message to his people through the prophet Ezekiel that He would overturn, overturn, overturn (That means revolution). Israel had fallen into idolatry under a succession of careless wicked kings, and at a time when Babylon was ascending into power over the then known world under Nebuchadnezzar. Israel’s king was in league with Babylon and looked to Babylon for national security rather than to God. Even though Israel were doing the rituals of offering incense and sacrifices and while many individual people honoured God in these things, they had generally wandered off in their true allegiance to God under misguided leadership. Zedekiah was the King of Israel at the time of Ezkiel’s prophecy and was made king by Nebuchadnezzar. Zedekiah started to switch allegiance to Egypt for political favour and this outraged Nebuchnezzar who decided to lay siege to Jerusalem and overthrow it. He took King Zedekiah and many thousands of the children of Israel to Babylon. He did this over a period of time and many even chose to stay behind in the desolated city. When Ezekiel was told (Ezekiel 21:18) to tell Israel that the king of Babylon would overthrow Jerusalem Israel scoffed and said that they were in covenant with God, but Israel had not obeyed the terms of their Covenant with God. Ezekiel told them that God would remove the mitre and the crown. The mitre stood for the priestly ministry and the crown stood for the Kingly ministry – the priests connected them to the heart of God and the King gave them authority under God. They had distanced themselves from their Covenant with God. A Covenant is like a contract, a terms of agreement for a binding relationship. A contract like this has three things that make it binding and effective – The promise, the payment, and the signature, or seal of agreement concerning all the special terms. The promise to Israel was Gods provision and protection and care for their lives. The payment was their sacrifices and their obedience to the Commandments. The seal, in other words the signing off concerning all the special terms God had put in place for the contract was their observance to the Sabbaths (Exodus 31:1). They thought they were doing this, but they resisted one big item regarding the Sabbaths. They did many of them, like the weekly Sabbath which they were meticulous about, and the new moons and festivals which were ritualised, but the demonstration of faith that would prove that they trusted God for his provision, which was demonstrated openly by ceasing from farming one year in every seven. They were to gratefully celebrate their relationship with God and with one another as tribes and families and friends and rest in God by trusting Him to provide for them and keep them safe and secure. Israel had not obeyed these Sabbath Rest Years for 490 years. They had not trusted God nor honoured him as their security and safety and provision. The priests had not instituted it and the Kings had not ordered it. They had trusted the idols of the nations, in this case Babylon. They breached the contract so then God would not continue to honour his part. Their judgment was that they would be taken into captivity for seventy years into Babylon until the ‘land had received her rest’ (2Chronicles 36:21) There are some striking parallels to the state of affairs between God and his people Israel and to those between God and his people in the earth today. In many places and at many times the State has influenced and dominated the material and moral nature of the Church, just as Ezekiel describes Babylon dominating and influencing Israel. It happened in the early days of Christendom when the Roman Empire was the head of the Church. Even after the Reformation in Europe the State still had great sway over the Church, and in recent times we have seen Russia and China give token authority to puppet Church structures, and in the Western Church today we see the worldly influences of materialism and immorality corrupting the institutional Church. We see political correctness stifling the voice of the regular Church, which is supposed to be the pillar and ground of truth. The Church is meant to be the expression of The Holy Spirit of Jesus and the Father in the earth. The Church is in Covenant relationship with God, as Israel was in Ezekiel’s time, and just as God had to overturn in the day of Ezekiel, I believe God wants to overturn overturn overturn in the Church today -His Revolution, a three time overturn which I believe means Father Son and Holy Spirt activity. God wants to recommission His Church into its powerful partnership with Him in bringing care and compassion and justice to this world. He wants to imbue us with a deeper confidence and trust and peace that He is with us in every single area of our lives in the midst of uncertain times – the times of our enforced Sabbath.

If Israel had understood the terms of agreement of their Covenant with God they would have attached their signature to the contract – they would have honoured the Sabbath years of rest, trusting God for their provision, enjoying faithful fellowship with a good God and with one another. They would have ceased from hanging on with their anxious hands to the Babylonian influence they were trusting in.

I believe God is saying to the Church today ‘I will overturn overturn overturn’. The three ‘overturns’ that I said I believe to mean the work of The Father, The Son Jesus, and The Holy Spirit. This is His revolution to bless us and reorder our lives under the terms of his Covenant with us. In his contract with us we have three things ONE - the Promise - ‘His life given to our lives for the forgiveness of our sins, and for the care and provision of our lives as His beloved children’ That is the first overturn – the first work of renewing and strengthening our understanding of the goodness of the Father. GOD FOR US TWO – The Payment – ALL DONE! Jesus has become the sacrifices and has made payment and given us His life for us to share. That is the second overturn – The second work of renewing and strengthening our understanding of the shared life of Jesus. GOD WITH US. THREE – The signature and the seal. Ephesians 1:13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and after you believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

That is the third overturn – This is the third work - of renewing and strengthening our understanding of the empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit. GOD IN US. So how do we appropriate this signature or seal of The Holy Spirit? The verse above tells us – It is after we believe, fully believe in the empowering presence of Holy Spirit within us. What is the result of this revolution for the Church. Look at the picture of Israel that we just spoke about

We have a better Covenant of GOD FOR US, GOD WITH US, AND GOD WITHIN US. God wants to revolutionise His Church by having them enter into the REST OF FAITH, and ceasing from their anxiety and drivenness and allowing God to work through us into the hearts of those in our world around us. The Sabbath rest for Israel meant giving the land rest for one year. Their land was actual territory, real estate. Our land is another territory – the territory of our hearts. Their time of prescribed rest was one year. Our time frame for Sabbath rest is not just one day or one year, it is every moment of every day. We can exercise a continual rest in our hearts of faith and trust in God, and find rest for our souls. This becomes our seal of the Covenant, the ever present indwelling of The Holy Spirit.

Ezekiel told Israel that God would remove the mitre and the crown. The mitre stood for the priestly ministry and the crown stood for the kingly ministry – the priests connected them to the heart of God and the King gave them authority under God. They had distanced themselves from their Covenant with God.

God wants to revive our priestly ministry. This means to awaken our faithful hearts of prayer and caring compassion in connecting those people and those circumstances in our world around us to the good and gracious heart of The Father.

God also wants to revive our Kingly ministry. This means to awaken us to a deeper awareness of His authority working in us to overcome the powers of darkness and disorder and chaos in the world around us. This is how God starts a revolution. To some it might seem like revival, to others it might seem like judgement. It may be called a ‘move of God’. It doesn’t matter what we call it – it is a revolution from heaven, and it puts things right. That word from God was directed at God’s people, Israel, who were chosen to reveal God to the world. Today it is the church that has been chosen to reveal God to our world.

Philippians 2:15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.

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A KAIROS PROPHETIC TIME Acts 17:26 ‘And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times (kairos) and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; For in him we live and move and have our being, for we are his offspring…For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”

There are two words used for time in the Scriptures. One is chronos and the other is kairos. Chronos refers to the measured space of time that exists as a background clock time for everything that ever happens to us. Kairos means the times of ultimate destiny for mankind and the world (eschatological time). Kairos is a prophetic passage of time that may last for a short or a long period of clock time. Relative to the big plan of our lives they are really made up of a sequence of ‘kairos passages of time’ of God ordained events that have meaning and purpose for us as in the above verse (and has determined their pre-appointed times (kairos) and the boundaries of their dwellings). We are currently living in a Kairos prophetic time in the global experience of the corona virus pandemic. Even though that has brought calamity and confusion to the entire planet, we are also in a prophetic Kairos time that is bringing the redeeming power of God to all nations. The Bible speaks to us today of our Kairos prophetic moment in history. Ephesians 5:16 ‘redeeming the time (kairos), because the days are evil.’

We are living in an ‘experience of ‘redeeming the time (Kairos) because the days are evil’. When the Scripture says ‘because the days are evil - ponerous’ it means that ‘The disorder of the time or the kairos in which we live is calamitous and morally culpable (humanity’ is greatly at fault for so much of what is going on – Corona – yes even the viral infection ). We can discern the nature of the evil of kairos time by the confusion and perplexity that we are experiencing because of the chaos and disorder of certain events of nature and human conflict. We are seeing this disorder and human conflict coming to pass

Redeeming the time means we can get back the will and purpose of God that has been lost or wasted so we can convert the challenge of this NOW passage of kairos time back into a powerful experience of the will and purpose of God. AS the Scripture I first read said regarding God’s pre-appointed times vs.27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; For in him we live and move and have our being ….We find him in a new way and we find one another in a new way – There is one particular disorder of human conflict we are facing in this Kairos time…the racial tension that is being inflamed by the hurts that have been carried out in many nations by one race upon another. Man’s attempts to remedy this hurt by restructuring human systems and institutions are passionately sincere and emotionally confusing and not really effective. The first thing to be understood also comes from that opening Scripture that said we are all of one blood. That has to be seen as a Kairos reality of God’s will and purpose for all of us as his offspring in the earth Clock time history has struggle with this racial conflict since the Tower of Babel when the nations were dispersed and separated and their languages were confused. It took the Kairos moment of Pentecost to bring all nations together when the spiritual Body of Christ stood up on the earth and people of different nationalities heard of the mighty works of God being proclaimed ALL IN THEIR OWN TONGUES by the apostles in their new heavenly language of the Spirit. Kairos time had now become Holy Spirit in us time, and this Kairos truth can only be fully realized by the New Covenant reality spoken of by Paul in Galatians 3 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise… We can be not only of one blood but of one Spirit.

There are other Kairos prophetic passages of time Scriptures that show us what we can expect in this current Kairos time.

As we realize the prophetic warnings of shakings are occurring upon the earth we will also realize that The Holy Spirit is bringing about the hearts of people turning to The Lord. The Bible says that these things will bring about the times (Kairos) of refreshing from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19 Now receive a change of heart and mind and have your past sins wiped out and turn to God. Then times (Kairos) of refreshing will come from the presence of the Lord).

When the whole world is in a place of calamity and fear and conflict and confusion (IE the days are Evil) there will be one of two outcomes for people because many will stand at the crossroads. Their anxiety and confusion and fear will get worse or they will rise up and trust in God. No one can stay the same in those times. This is part of redeeming the Kairos. I have observed some people letting anger and confusion leave them in distress and I have observed others allowing faith and hope to move them into rest.

An Old Testament story that shows this is found in First Book of Kings ch.18. After Israel had suffered three and a half years of punishing drought through years of turning away from God to worship idols Elijah confronted them and called upon God to bring rain. Israel watched while the priests of Baal went through desperate wailing and slashing of themselves with knives to get their idols to answer their prayer for rain. Elijah said to Israel don’t halt between two opinions, If The Lord be God follow him and if Baal (the world ) then follow him. God heard Elijah’s prayer and sent the rain and a Nation turned to God.

Overcoming and growing through the suffering of mind and soul in trials of faith is a Kairos experience. The Bible says that through the times (Kairos) of sufferings in times of crisis he gives a special grace that restores and settles our soul and matures us into full growth. When we set ourselves to diligently wait upon the Lord we can expect to experience God’s presence with us. We are not locked into the disordered tyranny of clock time, we are living in an eternal space of Kairos time where God activity happens more dramatically than the drama of disordered human emotion. The more darkness we see the more light we experience. We get from stress and rush to stillness and trust. That’s the bridge of faith. 1Peter 5:10 But the God of all grace, after you have suffered for a little while (kairos) will restore and establish and mature you to full growth, ready for anything…’

Assurance that we can outlast the attacks of the enemy Luke 4:13 ‘And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. (kairos)’ Jesus endured through spiritual warfare knowing that he (as would we) outlast the devil because he has limited ‘chronos’ within God’s ‘kairos’ and cannot out-endure us if we hang in with Jesus and trust him to see us through. Satan can only operate for a limited kairos because he does not have eternal life – we do

A powerful kind of prayer life can redeem or re-order the disorder we see about us. It is form of Kairos prayer – praying inn the Spirit with the kind of faith and hope that assures you that you are partners with Jesus and The Holy Spirit in their intercession for the will of God to be done within and beyond your world – what is happening in your life and circumstance and those you pray for. Ephesians 6:18 Praying in the Spirit at all times (Kairos) and on every occasion, staying alert and persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. There are certain faith filled prayers that are not about long clock time sittings and gatherings which are effective for the prayer of being in one accord. A few seconds or minutes, or more, of a Kairos time of prayer is even more spiritually explosive. We can be exercised in this at any time anywhere, doing anything. Thank you Lord for this grace upon our lives.

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THE HIGH CALL OF GOD

Philippians 3:13 … I press toward the goal for the prize of the high call of God in Christ Jesus.

The High Call of God is actually translated as the Upward Call of God. The word for high is ano which means upward or above, or Heavenly. The word in the original Greek for ‘Call’ is klesis which means an invitation. That means that a Heavenly invitation is coming from above, from God, and our response to that invitation, our RSVP, is directed upward, back to God.

This Heavenly Invitation is not a status or rank that makes some people get a ‘High’ calling and some people get a ‘low’ calling. God does not send out low invitations, he only issues a heavenly invitation, to get to know him, personally and intimately, through Jesus. Paul’s writes about his response to a personal invitation from God towards himself, to know him personally and intimately. (1Corinthians 1:31 – the glory trophy of knowing God – Jer 9.4) Philippians 3:8-10 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.

So a heavenly call is not some future invitation for one day after we die that we accept our invitation to finally go to heaven. The heavenly invitation is for us to live a heavenly life on earth right now. ` This is for everybody. This is our response to life itself. The only ‘low’ invitation comes from the devil who wants us to stay pinned down in a response to a lower invitation of struggling in the shadows of our own strength. Why take the low road when you can take the high road and see life from a higher and deeper perspective of faith.

But who gets this heavenly invitation? The answer is clear in the Scriptures. 2Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some suppose, but is longsuffering toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should receive repentance. Longsuffering is the process of withholding judgment by patiently giving someone the time and the many opportunities to get a change of mind (repentance) and receive and respond to the message (and the invitation) That word perish is apollymi in Greek which is translated 22 times in the New Testament as ‘TO LOSE’. The Holy Spirit grieves the loss and waste of such an invitation.

Paul encourages us in this when he writes the letter to the Romans and says; Romans 2:4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? God doesn’t want a planet full of ‘losers’.

An Old Testament illustration of the ministry of the ‘high call’ is found in Ezekiel. This is the story of the role of priests in the Old Testament, and only Levites could be invited into the Old Testament priesthood. A priest was a go-between between God and man. This is still the case, except that now, through Jesus all of us are invited into the priesthood of all believers (1Peter 2:5).

Some of the Levites in the story in Ezekiel took the low road and were careless in their response to this privilege, going after idols and setting a bad example to the people, and finally God had to let them be the losers because of their choice. So God let them go their own way and stuck with the Zadok clan of priests who chose the high road.

Ezekiel 44.15 "But the Levitical priests who descend from Zadok, who faithfully took care of my Sanctuary when everyone else went off and left me, are going to come into my presence and serve me. They are going to carry out the priestly work of offering the devoted (heleb - the best part for dedication) sacrifices of worship - the Decree of God, the Master. They're the only ones permitted to enter my Sanctuary. They're the only ones to approach my table and serve me, accompanying me in my work. " When they enter the gate complex of the inside courtyard, they are to dress in linen. No woolens are to be worn ... They're to wear a linen headpiece and linen underclothes… nothing that makes them sweat. When they go out into the outside courtyard where the people gather, they must first change out of the clothes they have been serving in, leaving them in the sacred rooms where they change into their everyday clothes… 23. "Their job is to teach my people the difference between what is holy and what is unholy, to show them how to discern between the godly and the ungodly way to do things. " When there's a difference of opinion, these priests will arbitrate. They'll decide on the basis of my judgments, laws, and statutes.

You might wonder about the choice of a linen headpiece instead of wool. The natural reason given here is that wool causes sweat. There’s also a spiritual reason why God went to so much trouble in the detail of things like this. There are many things in the Old Testament that hide a message for us in the New Testament. The Bible says that fine linen represents the righteousness of people who believe God and want to live close to him (Revelation 19). Righteousness means having our heart in alignment with God. This linen headpiece speaks to us of having our mind upon God, and having a mind of peace and order, and not causing sweat or anxious striving. When they go out to meet the people they change their religious clothes and wear everyday clothes– so they identify with the people. They have been in the presence of God and so they are able to carry this presence and impart it in the way they speak and act amongst the people. That is the work of a priest, to bring God into peoples hearts. We are told we are a spiritual priesthood and we can do the same as these priests in a New Covenant way, and bring God into peoples hearts with simplicity and grace instead of religious performance. These priests were given God’s wisdom in their counsel of people who asked for help and advice and prayer. The final verse says ‘these priests will arbitrate. They will decide on the basis of my judgments, laws, and statutes’. For us that means being able to hear what The Holy Spirit is saying to different people in different situations. That is how the Holy Spirit arbitrates (not legislates) and applies God’s word personally and individually because he knows peoples’ hearts. Paul said that his ministry was not of the letter but of the Spirit because the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. The Holy Spirit does not apply the letter of God’s word and put peoples’ under the law, but he brings the ministry of the Spirit and revelation of God’s word into the here and now of peoples’ lives. This was a type of the priestly ministry of Jesus as he spent time with his Father so that he would have his Father’s heart and mind on what to say to the people. This is now our priestly ministry, This is the heavenly calling available to all of us if we care to respond to God’s invitation. We are here to issue this invitation to anyone with ears to hear it. Th world generally has not had ears to hear this because it has been hearing other invitations to a more self gratifying and enticing message for itself. It is only when God gets the worlds’ attention that it might have ears to hear. So how much more do those who bear the message need to have ears to hear God at this time in an anxious, confused and despairing world.

The Zadok priests put God first and spent precious time with God each day before they got involved with the affairs of the people. As the Scripture from Ezekiel said They are going to carry out the priestly work of offering the devoted (heleb – oil, wine, grain, fat) sacrifices of worship - the Decree of God, the Master. They're the only ones permitted to enter my Sanctuary. They're the only ones to approach my table and serve me, accompanying me in my work.

Devotion is relational not transactional. People can pray fervently to get God to meet their personal needs and that is fine, but devotional is a kind of prayer that gives the best part to God – to God’s personal invitation of partnership with himself (accompanying me in my work). How long would these Zadok priests spend in God’s presence? All that we know is that it was a set time, but the effect stayed with them. However long we set to be with God will result in the effect of that staying with us (not a direct correlation), and what do we think and reflect upon in that time? a) His love and mercy and devotion to us (this is where the highest comes to the lowest (Isaiah 57:15). b) His supernatural work of goodwill towards us and on our behalf towards others. (prayer always happening Rom8:25)

We know that God gave those priests a life to live, a fruitful life, a busy life, but they wanted to give the first part, the best part to God, so that they could really live, as they would get his heart for the lives of the people in their world where he had placed them. If there is a best, why not give yourself to that.

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POWER LOVE AND AN ORDERED MIND 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear (deilia - timidity), but the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind. That word deilia that means timidity occurs only once in the whole bible – it is not phobeo the word used for fear in very other Scripture in the New Testament.

Paul writes an emotional letter to his dear friend and ‘son in The Lord’ Timothy. He says to him ‘I remember you in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears. Timothy had been going through quite a bit of suffering in the Church at Ephesus and was feeling rejected and intimidated and a little bullied perhaps because of the rejection of the Gospel message that he had embraced through Paul and delivered to the Ephesian church. Paul commiserates with him and tells him of his own suffering as he was suffering in jail for the same reason – the rejection of his message of the Gospel of grace. So he encourages Timothy that they can share together in the experience of this kind of suffering. They can turn the threats and mistreatment from others into a triumph of God’s Spirit of power and love working within. He affirms Timothy that he has a disciplined and ordered mind and that he can lay hold of the faith of how God was working through him with His power and His love and with Timothy’s ordered mind to reorder the confusion and disorder that was going on about him. Timothy was burdened but he was not giving up. Just because people need encouragement from someone does not mean that they are failing. It can mean that they are being encouraged to continue despite the pressure – to dig deep and tap into that spirit of power and love, with an ordered mind.

What is that power? - It is the power of God’s perfect love that casts out all fear. Ephesians 3:16 That he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all those who believe what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses (hyperbole) knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to that power at work within us.

Paul compares this power to a seed being rooted and grounded in love, so that roots go down deeply and the shoots spring up sturdily. Jesus compared his Kingdom to a tiny seed that grows into a large tree. (Matthew 13:3)

What was the heart of God in creating the universe and then creating humanity to live within it? Was it the power of Love? He certainly demonstrated his creative might and design and wisdom and knowledge and variety of life forms and colour and beauty. But he was not merely an engineering mathematical creative genius - what he most demonstrated was his overflowing love – It only came from one place – God – and he wanted to share that great thing with us…the highest form of energy in the universe to bring forth nations of people in his own image that he could share his love and his life with as a family and have them respond gladly to his love and to desire to share it with one another. So - God is love, but in Him are also hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). He is also the sum of all truth and justice. These are all weighty messages that God wants to be proclaimed. There are many who give themselves to bringing messages of truth, and of justice and of knowledge and of wisdom and the world abounds with such messengers and this can be a great blessing for humanity. Life can function well with these messages and the wheels of life go round but it is only when they are grounded in God’s love that they can have the power to bring Kingdom transformation . An ordered mind puts these messages under the order of the message of God’s love. And whoever asks God to make them a messenger of his love will need more than just a message, or knowledge of the message, they must live the message, even in the midst of intimidation and injustice. Having a message of love is easier than being the message of love. I can give the message etc…That is why it is such a difficult message for man to believe in and respond to. It starts by asking God to convince you of his love for you despite the circumstances of your life. That becomes the reordering of your mind. We can say that we didn’t deserve the circumstances we’re in and think that God can’t love me otherwise he wouldn’t have let that happen. That is a disordered mind. The world and the people in it will not always give you what you deserve, but God will always give you his love which you can’t ever say you deserve because of an impressive performance. Having an ordered mind means to get in order of priority what it is that we are really seeking in life. To have the assurance that you are loved by God - no matter what - ranks the highest in value as far as having a life worth living for.

It is by experiencing the love of God that we can be empowered by that love. That power begins to radically change us first, and then the power of that love can radically change the world around us. This is where the Holy Spirit rushes in and fills our heart and empowers our faith. There must be a settled yes to God’s love for us so that we can love the humanity that he loved so much that he sent his Son Jesus to die for. Then the power is unstoppable. Paul accepted that message (2Corinthians 5:14 The love of God imprisons me (existemi) orders my life) and he pleaded with Timothy to stand with him as a fellow messenger of that message and to release the Kingdom power of it. He said to Timothy ‘But you, Timothy, certainly know what I teach, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance…

What is the definition of power? Power is the capacity to move something from a lower level of energy to a higher level of energy like moving a huge rock to get it rolling down a hill. In the very beginning the H.S moved upon the depths of darkness then that first creative Word of power, the Logos, who was with God and who was God changed darkness into light (the first material energy to exist) and created man from the dust of the earth and that power was the love of God. Our life working together with the life of Jesus within us changes the nature of our being. This is the faith that works through love. The faith that works through love causes things around us to move from a natural energy to a spiritual energy. fear becomes love - anxiety becomes peace, sickness becomes healing - sorrow becomes joy, tears turn to laughter.

This is the work of the KINGDOM and the power is unstoppable.

WHAT TO DO – HOW TO LOVE IN A WORLD THAT ISN’T FAIR. Paul told Timothy not be intimidated and to call out the bullies. He did not say stop loving them. Would these people change? – not necessarily, but Timothy would change, and the power of the kingdom would be released, and order would come into the disorder, and truth would fasten itself into the hearts of those ready to listen and be transformed. God does not want us to be intimidated – by anybody. So we have to call it out like Paul told Timothy to do because intimidation comes from a disordered mind and creates relational chaos. We ask God to give us the courage to do this, and we do it calmly and from an ordered mind. While God’s love still remains in the equation the power of the Kingdom of God is at work in anew orbit of faith activity for you. Paul told Timothy he would suffer and in his feeling of weakness the strength and power of God would uphold him and become his strength. The same goes for us. This is the power that brings justice and order in its time.

But Paul went to jail – That is a great example of productivity in trials (Ian Heard’s sermon). God tells Paul to write a letter to Timothy…

God’s love is more than just a warm fuzzy feeling, a sentimental journey. That sentiment abounds in the world and it is a real blessing but the power of the creative life changing love of the Kingdom of God has its roots in God’s desire to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the highest possible way. Jesus came to model this power of love in laying down his life for us. You only know God’s Kingdom power when you are receiving God’s perfect love, being grounded in it and extending it out in goodwill to others.

I ask God continually to make his love real to me in my spirit. I assure myself of His Word that we just read concerning the length and breadth and depth and height of his love as being the truth of who he is and I seek to not waver in this. I ask him what it is that is blocking me from receiving that love. It is usually that I feel unworthy to receive it. It doesn’t have to be that I feel I have done wrong – it can be that I feel I have not done enough right. What this is doing is limiting the greatness of God’s love through a lack of faith and trust. It is a form of condemnation. The author of condemnation is the Accuser, which is translated as Satan in the Bible. John speaks to us about that kind of condemnation in 1John and says – If your heart condemns you God is greater than your heart. So we must not limit that greatness of God’s heart of love. An ordered mind is the result of seeing things as they really are in the Kingdom order of God. So I’m talking about needing God’s love more than anything – but what about fearing God. So we read earlier that Paul said that God has not given us the spirit of fear – but that word is not phobia fear fear – it is intimidation… Is there a fear that God does give us? Yes. Jeremiah 32. It is part of his new covenant… I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me. This is the most wonderful fear we can have in our lives…To not want to depart from him or ever be separated… Yes we need to have the genuine and honest sense of respect and awe for the greatness and wonder of God over our lives- but this fear of not departing from God is the desire to be always in loving relationship with him.

When something is rooted and grounded in the right soil it will break through concrete, even if it is just blades of grass. The Kingdom power in a seed of love searches downward for grounding and upward for light and finds it - and the life of that seed is finally put on display with the form and colour and strength that God has designed for us to have – in our lives. Be God’s messenger of love.

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THE WRESTLE The story of Jacob starts in Genesis chapter 25 (8 chapters) with Jacob grabbing his twin brother Esau’s heel at birth. He couldn’t wait, he wanted to be out there first, right from the beginning (The heel grabbing didn’t work by the way because Esau came out first), but that became the story of his life – Heel grabbing is all about impatience! Outa my way… Jacob and Esau were the sons of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham, the father of the Hebrew Nation. Abraham was told by God that his descendants would inherit the Land of Canaan, the Promised land. So as the firstborn son of Isaac, Esau was in line for he and his descendants to inherit all the Promises given to Abraham. The inheritance was to be imparted at the end of Isaac’s life and now it was time to pass it on. The Bible says that Esau was a hairy man, a hunter, and he smelled of the hunting fields. But Jacob cheated his Father and older brother by dressing up to smell like his older brother, and when Esau was out hunting Jacob asked his blind old father for the firstborn blessing. When Isaac reached out to lay his hands on him and impart the blessing he thought it was Esau. So Jacob received the blessing of the firstborn, with the help of his mother, and Esau missed out. She knew that Jacob had a heart after God and that Esau wasn’t interested in the spiritual blessing anyway and she decided to give God a hand..

She then tells Jacob to run away to where her brother Laban and his daughters lived. He runs away in fear of his life, knowing how angry Esau would be. On his way he camped overnight in a place called Bethel and had an encounter with God – He received a vision where God said; ‘I am The Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you’. That was the first direct blessing from God to Jacob. The blessing of the PROMISE. The blessing was now Jacob’s.

Many years later after he had skillfully succeeded in prospering himself at his father-in-law Laban’s expense he decides to return to his land with his wives and children and a wealth of goods. He had been told that Esau was on his way to meet him, and of course he was afraid. So he sent his wives and children and servants ahead of him with gifts for Esau to hopefully placate his brother’s anger. He waits back and stops at a brook and it was there that Jacob has another encounter with God and that changes his life. He wrestles with God, who appears in the form of an angel and they wrestle throughout the night. He tells God that he will not let go of him until God blesses him. God touched his thigh in the wrestle and Jacob’s hip is put out of joint, and God tells Jacob he has prevailed (Lasted the distance, endured)... That was the second direct blessing from God to Jacob – The blessing of the WRESTLE.

During the struggle God asked Jacob his name and when Jacob tells him, God says ‘your name shall no longer be called Jacob, (which means conniving cheat )(the swindling heel grabber), but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ So that night the old Jacob meets the new Jacob as Israel - a change of name to indicate the change of nature. Israel means You have power with God. He no longer had to live as an impatient heel grabber – God was at work. Jacob also asked God what his name was. God didn’t tell him his name but he asked him why he wanted to know, and Jacob says ‘because I have seen God face to face and have been preserved.’ Face=presence. He had been in the presence of God. Power with God – Preserved – Presence of God The real prevailing – lasting the distance, was that Jacob wanted God and needed God more than anything else, and that he was willing to face being changed and go through the wrestle with God, clinging to him and lasting the distance to receive that blessing that only God could give – being changed into the person God wanted him to be, being preserved, having power with God, living in his presence.

From that time on after the second encounter, the wrestle, Jacob walks with a limp. God was saying to Jacob; You now have power with me, ruling with me in my strength, with your new name Israel, but only when you don't insist on ruling in your own strength as Jacob. I will be reminding you of your heel grabber weakness that you were born with every time you put weight on that leg of yours and have to limp. Jacob’s limp was the reminder that his inherent weakness was ‘heel grabbing’ and that he had always been tempted to impatiently use that as his strength.

These two messages concerning two separate blessings from God to Jacob are lessons for us of two separate experiences of encounters with God and blessings from God that we have through Jesus.

For Jacob the first encounter was the promise of the blessings of Abraham. Our first encounter is a revelation of the promise of the blessings we have in Jesus. The second encounter of blessing with Jacob was his wrestle with the angel proving to himself and to God that he had a heart to pursue God to wait on God and to wait for God. That took a few years to arrive. Our second encounter of blessing that we experience is the blessing of our WRESTLE with God, with a heart to pursue God and to wait on God and to wait for God. We don’t have to wait years for that – It can happen any time we’re ready.

Jacob had to be reminded that he was a heel grabber – that is what the limp signaled to him – that he had the potential to go back to his old manipulative impatient ways as Jacob to impatiently make God’s promises come to pass, even though he already had all the promises of the blessings of Abraham!

We have to go through the same kind of wrestle with God that Jacob went through to become the person we were meant to be. The weakness becomes the strength as we go the distance and are transformed – because of a limp!

Having a limp does not mean that we ARE the limp. It is just the opposite. Having something isn’t BEING something. The Jacob in us does not get eliminated but just gets put in its place. It no longer has dominion over us after its power over us was put to death on the cross, and the power of another life has taken its place – God with us in Jesus. Jacob was born with a heel grabbing instinct. It was a drive to get ahead in life and his brothers heel was the closest thing to getting in his way. Jacob was given the gift of an energy to achieve, a drive that came from God. That gift also had a danger with it as well as opportunity - His life would be driven by winning and he would have defence mechanisms about losing. He would be skilled and pushy and probably put a lot of people offside. And God would be on that case to humble that attitude for the rest of his life. That drive had to be submitted to God in the Wrestle… We all have these gifts of God’s creation in us - all different. God has given all of us a drive to get something good done that God wants done – and we are born with it. I am calling this a ‘heel grabber’ syndrome that we were born with, but we do not all want to grab heels - we are all different but we all have our own way of trying to impatiently get that good thing done that only God can get done in us. EG, Another kind of person different to Jacob might have been created with the heart and the energy to be an encourager and a motivator, and they would not have grabbed the heel but maybe instead give Esau’s heel a shove forward - but then they would want the emotional payoff of being appreciated and approved of. They’d have to learn to manage that for the rest of their lives and they would have their Transformation sign post limp to remind them. Another might have a drive for justice and be given the gift of compassion and feel bad for poor Esau and Pat his little heel and shed a tear. That little justice warrior would have a sensitivity about victims all their life and perhaps even perceive themselves that way, and God would have to sort that all out in the Wrestle and give them a limp.. And on and on it goes- So we are quite a zoo when it comes to this.

We will look at a couple of others in the Bible whose impatient reaction to things that God allowed into their lives caused God to give them some kind of a limp to be made aware of their impatience and to learn to wait for God in how they managed their gift – and be Transformed.. So - Jacob impatiently grabbed a heel and Moses impatiently struck a rock. (God had told him to simply speak to the rock but he got impatient). Paul became impatiently irritated by his thorn in the flesh and asked God three times to make it go away but God told Paul he had to live with it because his grace was sufficient for him.

Paul’s thorn in the flesh was his limp, but he allowed that to be a signpost to Transformation - to show him that God’s grace was causing him to become the person who he really was in Christ. 1Corinthians 15:10: ‘I am what I am by the grace of God’ Paul tells us about his wrestle with God and we learn about his ‘walks with a limp’ experience;

2Corinthians 12:7: (Message) Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap, a thorn in the flesh, to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's messenger did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, ‘My grace is sufficient; it's all you need because My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer (The hall of funny mirrors), these limitations that cut me down to size-- abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become. Paul is telling us we are here to experience the awareness of our limitations but to use that to grow into spiritual growth in the limitless grace of God, and the limp simply loses its power to handicap us in living the life of Jesus within. With faith we accept the transformation process and the weakness becomes the strength.

The nature of the wrestle – the struggle against impatience.

Cling to God. We see God face to face in the sense that we know we are in his presence. We wait for his power to achieve what we cannot achieve – This needs faith and patience. With Faith and patience we inherit the promise. Faith receives it and patience perceives it we see it as out reality. So we last the distance ie, prevail with God – we have power with God.. We wait on God so that we can wait for God. We can either wrestle with the world much of the time or wrestle against darkness much of the time. But if we wrestle first with God the wrestle with life in the world and with the attacks of darkness to defeat us are undertaken by God - showing himself strong on our behalf. We are living in a time in history when there have never been so many people who have sense of loss of the power of being able to control or change their circumstances and God is inviting anybody who is willing to come to him and have that wrestle. God showed Jacob – God showed Moses – God showed Paul – God will show you.

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HIDDEN TREASURE

This is the story about us being vessels that contain a treasure within. And no matter how fragile that vessel is, or how formidable are the pressures upon that vessel, the inner treasure is of greater power than the outward pressure. There is a Scripture that talks about that Treasure, which is the life of Jesus within us, being made evident in our lives, no matter what is going on in our circumstances. 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard- pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.

Many people are asking the question in this time of Covid-19 distress and affliction; How we are going to come out the other end? Well How are we? Our future material circumstances remain uncertain, and restrictions upon our freedom of movement and interaction are being gradually eased, our health and hygiene guidelines stay constant, but a massive question is how are we going to come out the other end emotionally, and that depends massively on how we are going to come out the other end spiritually.

Paul speaks in that Scripture about having experiences of being hard pressed or under pressure, feeling perplexed or trapped, feeling threatened and being hard hit. Some or all of that is what many people can readily say they have experiencing now to some degree. The negative outcomes Paul could have ended up with after all this were his being crushed, being in despair, feeling forsaken, or even being destroyed. These are natural human responses to those kinds of pressures that have seemed to hit everybody on the planet all at once at the moment in one way or another. They are all a matter of degree, and people can get stuck in a cycle of negative emotional reaction, which is now happening.

When Paul (Saul) was a zealous Jew persecuting Christians he used to let these negative reactions define him and make him angry and fire him up into aggressive or defensive action. The Bible tells us how he went into peoples’ houses and dragged them into prison and even had them killed… Those reactions would make him look for someone or something to blame so he could fight back at that and feel self-empowered in some way. That is because those emotional reactions have an energy – a negative energy, that comes from a negative spiritual energy.

But the converted Paul found a distinctive inner spiritual energy in all of the pressure he describes and experienced the ‘excellence of the power of God ’within him. The word for ‘excellence’ in the Greek in this verse is ‘hyperbole’ which is the word we use colloquially to mean exaggerated or overstated. The Greek word means ‘to be thrown out beyond the normal range’. In other words Paul experienced a power that was out in another orbit. It operated above the normal energy of willpower or mere emotional determination. He found the power of the indwelling life of God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

This spiritual energy that Paul found within became the treasure of Paul’s heart. In the bible this is called the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 13:44 … The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Paul knew the treasure was there – he learned how to access it. He had learned to sell off some things in order to acquire the better thing. God had changed him. He said he had suffered the loss of all things to gain Jesus, to be found in him, to be found in his field and to find his treasure in that field. How do we do this?

It is the difference between living in the mindset of the Kingdom or living in the mindset of the world – living in the natural or living in the spiritual. I sell off all that extra emotional baggage and negative mindset, and buy the field where the treasure is. We don’t buy the treasure, we buy the field and the field yields the treasure. That field becomes our new heart, the new territory that we possess on the inside. It is the Kingdom of God within us. It contains within it all the goodness of God that we can receive through faith. Paul tells us that we can be filled with all the fullness of God – that is extraordinary but true. That is firstly all spiritual blessings that we have through Jesus, the love and the peace and the joy and it is also the beautiful promise of Jesus to us about not being anxious about material needs like the world is, but rather seeking first the kingdom of God within us and all those things will be added to us because our Father knows we have need of these things. All of that is that is the treasure. The economic forecasters are telling us how doubtful they are about economic recovery – and that is quite a rational statement – but God provides for those who truly trust him, who buy the right field, and sell off the anxiety and stress and possess their souls through faith and patience

God gives us a new heart and new desires and we trade off the old heart and sell off the old territory and its negative emotional baggage that seeks to attach itself to us. Our spiritual journey is one of being aware of having a new heart. Every decision of faith in that new territory of the new heart grows the area of this new territory. The old territory or old heart gives way to the expanding territory of the new heart. Throughout the Old Testament God had been promising that he would give us a new heart that responds to his love and take away the old hard heart that goes its own way and continually misses the mark (Sin). That is the new Covenant since Jesus. But until we actually start trading this baggage off we can’t afford to buy the field as our old inner field still takes up all the space. Either Jesus is evident in us or the baggage of anxiety is. If we know the difference we can choose. The new territory contains the treasure of Faith and Hope and Love. The old territory we sell of contains anxiety and despair and resentment.

I have heard many TV interviews with excellent commentary from many experts on the different aspects of the Covid-19 crisis. Some were walking encyclopedias of the economic options and others were talking medical dictionaries of the health crisis. When any of them were asked about how we were going to come out of this in their particular category; they would say ‘We dont know how this will work out – it’s unknown. There is another group of experts whose specialty is understanding and comparing the merits and deficiencies of the different models of the countries and states and regions with different combinations of greater restrictions on either the economic or the health factors. When asked which model is the best combination, the answer is ‘We cannot say as yet – it’s unknown’.

But each one of us can know how we are going to come out of this spiritually and emotionally. I personally think that this awareness is part of the Holy Spirit awakening in the earth in our day. Can you imagine the futility of us trying to make things change in our world and not first letting things change in ourselves first? That has never worked.

In the final verse of that Scripture about all the pressures and the treasure in earthen vessels Paul was able to say; ‘so death works in us but life in you’ He meant that ‘death working in him’ was the letting go of the emotional baggage and negative mindset. And he meant that for him, ‘life working in you’ was the faith and hope and love within him that also imparted that spiritual energy into the hearts and minds of those around him. That is what Paul called true spiritual ministry.

God is there FOR YOU in the midst of the current crisis to give you faith and hope and love. God is there WITH YOU in this crisis to impart faith and hope and love.

If all that we have as a mindset is the pain of the adversity of today, that starts to define us according to what we don’t have and what we are not, instead of the inner treasure that defines us by what we do have and the new person that we truly are in God. Whatever that mindset is becomes the spiritual energy that radiates out from us as who we are. We have to sell off that ‘don’t have and are not’ for what we actually ‘do have’ NOW – who we really are, now, and allow the ‘excellence of the power of God’, that real inner state of who we are be found in us, in that field, that new spiritual territory of our heart. It is a spiritual energy exchange. We can experience the peace and rest of that beautiful field ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

The treasure within is our spirit joined to the Lord’s Spirit. It is realized as a conscious presence with Jesus, so that his life can be expressed through our life. It does not have to be a feeling - it is accepted as a fact, a spiritual reality of faith. The feelings follow faith, the witness of the Spirit of joy, a buoyancy that lifts us into another orbit around our centre, who is God. We now become God centred and not self centred. David was able to testify of this ever present presence in the Psalms.

Psalm 139 - God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand. I'm an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking.You know when I leave and when I get back; I'm never out of your sight. You know everything I'm going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you're there, then up ahead and you're there, too— your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful I can't take it all in! Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? to be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you're there! If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute— you're already there waiting! Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I'm immersed in the light!" It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, they're all the same to you.

What gets in the way of this treasure being taken hold of and realized in our lives is all the reactions going on in our minds and emotions, and their relentless and demanding claim on the inner territory of our heart, of our concept of who we are. Again I say - making us feel self-conscious instead of God conscious.

Matthew 13:44 … The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Thank you Lord for helping us to acquire that field, thank you for drawing us into your orbit of the excellence of the power that lifts us up and overcomes the heavy weights of the negative emotions that would seek to oppress us. We come to you as your vessels today, and you fill us with your treasure.

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COMMUNION JESUS AND PASSOVER FEAST The first Communion service ever was when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Like many other Jewish groups and families in Jerusalem they were sharing the Passover meal that night, as that was the custom on that special day before the Feast of Passover for every family to eat of the Passover lamb. Israel shared this meal each year to celebrate the miraculous deliverance of Israel out from Egypt where they had been in slavery under cruel oppression for 400 years. On that Passover day that they fled out of Egypt each home was instructed to take a lamb for each household and to kill the lamb and apply the blood of that firstborn lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the house so that the angel of death would ‘pass over’ them, and the firstborn son of each family was spared from death, and the firstborn son of every Egyptian family died.

To this day Orthodox Jews as individual households all over the world celebrate this Passover feast. They come together for a traditional meal called the Seder, which means “order”, because everything is done in a particular order. The whole theme of the special meal on the Seder night is to remember the exodus of Egypt as if they were there and that is what happened to them, so it is experiential for them and educational for the children and visitors… The Seder plate includes a variety of foods, and they are symbolic. The lamb bone represents the blood of the lamb that was applied to the doors of the Jewish people as God passed over them; the maror (bitter herbs) represents the bitterness the Jews had to endure as slaves; there was a sweet, brown concoction/paste that represents the mortar used to build the Egyptian pyramids; and the dipping of parsley into salt water represents the tears of the enslaved Jewish people. And there is the Matzah, the unleavened bread that is eaten at Passover. They have to eat this because according to the Book of Exodus, the Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry that their bread didn’t have time to rise. It is traditionally viewed as the bread of the poor, and is therefore consumed to remind Jewish people of the hardships their ancestors endured. During their Passover ceremony, many Jewish children play a game in which there are three pieces of matzah, like mini cakes on a plate, and one piece of matzah, the middle piece, is hidden. The child who finds that middle piece off matzah at the end of the meal wins what is called the ‘ransom’. I remember asking my host what this signified and he wasn’t sure. I explained to him what I thought and he respectfully listened.’.

Jesus brought himself to the first ever communion table as that firstborn lamb at the Passover meal on that Passover night. He was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, but the disciples did not fully understand the awesome significance of that truth on that night. Jesus had been bringing himself as that lamb down through the ages in the prophetic symbolism of the feasts and sacrifices as mentioned so many times in the Old Testament, from Genesis 22 when Abraham said that God would provide a lamb for the sacrifice when he was told by God to offer Isaac upon the altar. Then there was Exodus regarding Passover and in various lamb sacrifices in Leviticus and Numbers, and also in prophetic words of the prophet Isaiah in ch.53:7 – led as a lamb to the slaughter.

Jesus brought himself to the world throughout those years that he walked the earth as the Son of Man and the Son of God, and he knew that night of the Last Supper that he was about to bring himself to the very altar of the cross where he would be that lamb slain for the sins of all the world. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and what he was saying. He was going to bring humanity out from slavery to the world and that message was contained in the message of bringing Israel out of Egypt..

Jesus had said earlier during his ministry ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life in you I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat’. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. It is a hard saying. And I have thought the same to myself. But Jesus took them to task for taking offense at what he had said and told them that they were getting stuck in looking at the outward form of what he said and were missing the deeper inner meaning of how we would take his life into us as our life us and our lives would be in him in the new Kingdom order that he was bringing in through his death and resurrection. He told them that he words he had spoken were spirit and life, and not to think of the natural or flesh perspective of what he said.

Even on that night of the last supper when Jesus took the bread and the wine and said the most amazing words to his disciples, those words remained a puzzle to them all except for John, who stood with Mary the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross when he was crucified at Calvary. John seems to have grasped some understanding of New Kingdom order when he relates to us in his Gospel that The Father and Jesus would come to make their home within us after the Holy Spirit had been sent.

Paul was not one of the apostles then of course but he received a revelation from Jesus about these words of Spirit and life and he passed these on to the Corinthians in the only epistle that describes the Communion table. 1Corinthians 11:23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “ This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.

Jesus had come as the Passover Lamb to them from of old, and also as the lamb being consumed at the table that night, and also as their servant leader as he washed their feet, and the servant of mankind throughout his life, and then as the bread and the cup also at the Last supper. So while Jesus was always coming TO humanity throughout the ages as the Lamb slain, he had now arrived at his appointed time and destination to fulfil his destiny on the earth. At that time Jesus was still coming to us in earthly natural form and everything he said and did regarding the Lamb and the Passover meal and the bread and the cup was part of the story of how God in Jesus was sent to us. he celebrated that symbolically at the Last Supper and had Communion with his disciples and then went to the cross and died and said ‘It is finished’. What it meant for him to break the bread and drink the cup on that night, and what he wanted it to mean for us was not just that he had come to humanity at that time to fulfill past history but that he was also coming to us on earth as the bread of life and the cup of the New Covenant in his blood to fulfil the future of mankind as ‘God with Us’.So while Jesus did come physically to us as literal body and blood at that time, through his life on earth, the spiritual reality has been realised – We share life with the risen Jesus – the words that he spoke to the disciples about his body and his blood have now become Spirit and life.

Now we go through the bread and the wine by faith, into the person and presence of the risen Jesus and there we have communion with him and with one another. He has sent his Spirit and he has left for us the Communion table to celebrate in remembrance of him. Since his resurrection the communion meal is a time of spiritual revelation of Jesus to us as we open our hearts and sit in his presence. We open our hearts and he opens our eyes.

After dying on cross and saying It is finished Jesus came to 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus and when he sat and broke the bread and had communion with them at the inn their eyes were opened and they knew him.

When we see Jesus at Communion we receive ALL spiritual blessings from God through what Jesus has done for us. Jesus has become our salvation and redemption, our peace and our wisdom, our healing and provision. Communion is a time when our eyes can be opened with a special focus of faith and an anticipation to see Jesus as Paul did when he said ‘It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that lives in me’. The Bible also says there will be an ongoing opening of our eyes to the revelation of him to us when he shares the final promise of communion ‘in the Kingdom’ with his disciples (Matt 26 - I will not drink this wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father's Kingdom). Our Kingdom life here in this here and now life on earth turns our day to day natural old creation life into a spiritual new creation life where things continually become new, with a new hope and new faith and a new reality – the experience of ‘God with us’

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STAND STILL AND SEE THE SALVATION OF YOUR GOD.

These words were spoken by Moses at the Red Sea as Israel marched forward to a new beginning. It was a new beginning of seeing God supernaturally at work in their lives. Every life can have this new beginning of seeing God at work in their lives. It is the life of faith.

Exodus 14:13 And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of your God, which He will accomplish for you today. This the story of Israel crossing the red sea after escaping out of Egypt, and with the Egyptian army chariots in pursuit. The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years, two million of them, with no concept of God. They had been without prophets, except for their new leader Moses, and there was yet no priesthood or Commandments or tabernacle. They were glad to be out of there but then they were horribly disappointed and disillusioned by the fact that there was an impassable Red Sea in front of them and they believed that they had been brought out of slavery only to be killed by their pursuers.. This was a first for Israel – They had not had to have faith before, and now their faith was a matter of standing still and watching what God would do to save them. This was confusing for them because this is a difficult lesson for anyone to learn. We think we must do something in order to make something happen. But it is always about what God is doing – and then there is always something for us to do in response.

Its just a matter of when and how we do what is required of us. The first thing Israel had to do was to stand still and see – then Moses held out the rod over the waters and the waters opened up – they saw the work of God - then Israel had to get moving and cross over. The sea divided with a high wall of water on both sides and a passageway between the walls of water for them to walk through. Moses had to be obedient to what God told him to do, then Israel had to be obedient to what Moses told them to do, and two million people had a head-start and crossed on dry land. When the Egyptians got to the passageway between the walls of water God miraculously removed the wheels off the Egyptian chariots and they became stuck in the sand. Then when Israel were safely across Moses held the rod above the waters again and the sea closed in on the Egyptians. It is a detailed story in the book of Exodus but Paul writes simply in the book of Hebrews; Hebrews 11:29 By faith Israel crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.

Another ‘Stand still and see’ from God’s word to King Jehoshaphat came through Jahaziel the prophet.

We now look at God’s Word to Jehoshaphat; 2Chronicles 20:17. You will not need to fight in this battle for the battle is not yours, but God's. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you.” In that battle of Jehoshaphat, the enemy armies of Ammon and Moab and Mt.Seir were about to attack Israel. Israel were told not to attack these three nations when they first came out of Egypt, but now these three nations were about to dispossess Israel from their inheritance. They were mighty armies and the people were in fear and terror. Jehoshaphat cried out to God ‘O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” The Bible goes on to say ‘And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were destroyed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, and destroyed them first, and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.’ So they all began to ambush one another and by the time Israel appeared on the scene ready for battle there were dead bodies everywhere and the fight was all over, and it took Israel three days to gather up all the spoil from the treasuries of the opposing armies.

These two accounts of God’s salvation apply to the nation of Israel, God’s Old Covenant people. But these are examples that apply to us today as God’s people, us as his family in the world, and us as his army. We can learn from these examples that we can be here for God, and for each other, and for our own spiritual edification and growth. We are here to honour God by responding to his love for us through our faith in him, trusting in his goodness to us. We are here together carrying one another’s burdens, praying and blessing one another and receiving blessing and prayer from one another. We are here together for this world, sharing in our prayers together for this world and for those in authority in this world that they will be equipped and blessed by God to serve in a Godly way in our nation. And we can also take these truths of God’s Word and apply them to our personal walk with God, for our own encouragement and spiritual growth and comfort as we make him Lord of our lives.

Those stories were about seeing the salvation of God in the Old Covenant way because they saw God win the battle for them in the physical realm. Today we see the salvation of God through the eyes of faith of the new Covenant. Jesus has become our salvation. When Jesus died for us and rose again from the dead he overcame all the powers of darkness on our behalf, and then sent the Holy Spirit to join the life of Jesus to us so that we could experience this salvation and this life of victory over darkness. They did physical warfare – we do spiritual warfare. We can receive peace from God, knowing that he alone can work upon and change the nature of things and the hearts people, and that he is the creator God who alone can brings order out of chaos, and who speaks light into darkness. Our battle is against darkness and disorder. They had their armour on and their weapons ready in the physical realm, and so do we in the spiritual realm. This requires faith - real faith.

Paul explains spiritual warfare to us in 2Corinthians 10, saying that ‘the weapons of our warfare are not carnal’. That word carnal means of a natural human order, as opposed to a supernatural spiritual order. He tells us that these spiritual weapons were mighty in God, able to destroy the potential strongholds that darkness would hope to occupy in our minds and in our hearts. Darkness seeks to occupy territory that we have given to God to occupy, as we partake of the life of his Spirit within us, and welcome the residence of Jesus and the Father in our hearts (John 14:23). And Paul knew how put his armour on, which means being protected in his mind and heart by that armour. He says in Ephesians 6:10 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the times of evil, and having done all, to stand. In the same passage of Scripture Paul talks about our spiritual armour and that we wrestle not against people but against dark spirits that influence principalities, which are social demographic regions where the culture of states and cities is expressed. He tells us that we also wrestle against powers that buffet our personal souls. He tells us that we wrestle against the rulers of the darkness of this age, that means the darkness that is influencing the collective mindsets and ideologies and attitudes of the global atmosphere that exists in this time of worldwide crisis. By the way, that word wrestle in the original language in Scripture is telling us that we ‘overthrow’, not just struggle, so it is an assertive statement, not a timid one. And we are also told that ‘greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.’

Paul mentions some strategic spiritual defensive pieces of armour such as a helmet protecting the mind and thoughts, and he talks about a spiritual breastplate over the heart that protects us from fear. The head and the heart are the two most vulnerable parts of the body in warfare. In spiritual terms the mind is the stronghold to where darkness directs his primary attack. We are directed in the Scripture that I referred to above to overthrow the imaginations of our minds that would block us off from getting our minds on God and his power and his love. These imaginations are the negative emotionally driven regrets or disappointments of the past, or the anxious menace of an uncertain future that we can so easily attach our thoughts to. We are directed to bring our thoughts captive to the present moment that contains the ever present presence of God with us through the indwelling Holy Spirit who reveals the reality of the power of Jesus to reorder our lives. This is being renewed in the spirit of our minds. We magnify the reality of God’s supernatural activity above the unreality of our anxious imaginations about everything that might go wrong.

The other vulnerable area of our body that comes under attack is our heart. That is where either fear or faith can dwell. The Bible says that ‘with the heart man believes’. Darkness fires darts of doubt and fear into this stronghold of our relationship with God, and we are given a shield of faith to protect ourselves from this kind of attack. Paul also mentions spiritual weapons, like the sword, which speaks of the word of God, and the bible also says that faith comes by hearing the living Word of Jesus not just in our mind, but in our heart. In the same

The people under Jehoshaphat were told to ‘Position yourselves, stand still, and see, and to fear not....’ We Position ourselves – Our position is as partners together with God. We are partakers of his nature - Joint Heirs together with Jesus. We do not earn this position – it is a gift of God’s grace. But we dare not neglect it.

We stand still – We come into a place of readiness and alertness in our spirit, not passively but actively -mindful of the now moment of God’s ever present presence with us. We See - That is seeing by faith as opposed to seeing things happen the way Israel did at the red sea and the ambushing of the enemies in Jehoshaphat’s battle. We become conscious of the fact that God is at work in the world of the unseen – the outward ‘seen’ will come if you have been ‘seeing’.

The seeing by faith is the believing. That is faith and trust and the expectation of God to act and produce his result for us to wonder at and give thanks for. That expectation is our hope - a buoyancy that lifts us into a present moment assurance of the greatness and goodness of God.

We then ‘fear not and neither be dismayed’ That means we magnify God’s greatness above our own weakness – ‘For The Lord your God is with you’. And with that – all I have left to say is ‘The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.’

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Prayer and share of S M 

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THREE CUPS There are three cups that God holds out for us to drink from. They are; The cup of Iniquity - The cup of the New Covenant – The cup of suffering. These are all cups of new beginnings. Each one of those three cups has a different setting but they all symbolise the continuing wrestle of The Holy Spirit within our hearts, a wrestle that challenges a state of mind and heart in us that resists the Holy Spirit. The heart of mankind wants to go its own way with its own desires and has from the very beginning. Nd the Holy Spirits work is to change that heart and mindset in order to make way for a new beginning, a new heart and a new mind of freedom because of a new spirit within us. That is the story of salvation.

These Three Cups are cups of new beginnings.

The cup of the New Covenant This is mentioned in 1Corinthians where Jesus takes the cup at the last supper and says, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This is also called The cup of blessing that we (1Corinthians 10:16) all give thanks for, sharing in the lifeblood of Christ. Jesus called this cup the New Covenant in his blood, the verse often read at Communion. This is the new supernatural bond of faith that is formed when people share life together with Jesus and with one another. God is saying that his life belongs to us and that our lives belong to him and to one another. All spiritual blessings flow from this New Covenant with God through Jesus. This new covenenant is mentioned in Hebrews 8 When God speaks of a new covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will disappear.

When the disciple Stephen was stoned to death in martyrdom I believe he saw something of the old covenant passing away, and a new cup being offered to humanity. He saw the resistance to the struggle of the Holy Spirit with the hearts and minds of the leaders of the nation of Israel. Stephen admonished the leaders of the nation of Israel and entered into a detailed account of their history from the commencement of their nation; and to show how kindly God had dealt with them, and how ungraciously they and their fathers had treated God back, and that they had always resisted the Holy Spirit. There were many who had not resisted the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets, and there were many who lived and died in faith and loyalty to the Old Covenant. But at this time he was led to the conclusion that God could no longer bear with them, because their cup of iniquity had long been overflowing. That cup was the cup of judgment which was about to be poured out upon Israel after Stephen was martyred. Romans 11:25 The judgement of partial blindness to the Gospel until the fulness of the gathering in of humanity has been accomplished. But Israel will receive Jesus their Messiah at the appointed time of his mercy and grace upon them. Acts 7:51. You always resist the Holy Spirit; just as your fathers did 6. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand. And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand!” Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting. They rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul. As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” The bible tells us that Jesus is always seated at the right hand of the Father – he doesn’t stand, except, it seems, to bring judgement. This marked the time of judgement of Israel.

THE CUP OF SUFFERING – This was the cup that Jesus drank in the Garden of Gesthamane. There is a story in the book of Matthew 20 where the mother of James and John asks Jesus … Can my two sons sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom.” But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink ?”vs.26 You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It's not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.

Jesus was asking them to have a different mindset to the people in this world ‘s system who arrogantly ruled over others and let power go to their heads. God’s power doesn’t go to his head it goes to his heart. He cares for us in the personal burdens we carry. In Isaiah 53 the bible tells us that he took our sorrows that weighed him down. It was through his suffering that we could have peace. He asks us to drink that cup in caring for one another and bearing each other’s burdens. That’s the cup of suffering. It is also going through the tough times without complaining, but giving thanks to God for his goodness. Everyone is going through some kind of suffering at the moment and many are without help and without hope, and many many are complaining bitterly, and that is understandable when a person has no other hope except what this world has to offer. But we have a hope, and can give hope and give help. and that too is taking the cup of suffering.

The story of God and humanity has always featured a struggle right at the heart and centre of its passionate journey of love and response – Divine love and human response. The conflict rages on to this day. It is in the middle of everything that is happening between God and us and between us and one another. God always embraces his creation and that creation, which means us specifically in the context of what I’m talking about today is of a lower order than himself who is Uncreated being. It is even said of us as humanity that we are made a little lower than the angels. This gap of separation between God and humanity provokes us to resist his overture of love and to assert our own self determined course, our own rite of passage to our idea of self fulfilment. The Holy Spirit was there in the first instant of creation bringing light into darkness and order into chaos, bringing form and beauty into nothingness. It is an ongoing story. The Holy Spirit is right in the middle of this dispute right now, contending with the human heart to allow God’s love to subdue it and reorder it and make it to be at one with his love and virtue and truth.

THE CUP OF INIQUITY The cup of Iniquity Psalm 75:2 For the Lord holds a cup in his hand that is full of wine mixed with spices. He pours out the wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink it, draining it to the dregs. That word judgement means that everything we do has consequences. The word in the bible for this word is KRISIS. A Crisis, as we know, is always a time of decision making. It means a time of opportunity to make a right decision along with good outcomes but it also holds within it the danger of a wrong decision, and the harmful consequences. This means all of us, nations and indviduals. I believe this world is being offered this cup in the current situation of our global catastrophe. Recently I spoke of the message of God to Noah about how he had to prepare an ark before the global game-changing event of the flood occurred that marked the end of things being done man’s way and beginning to be done God’s way. That was the time of the preparation of the Ark which was 120 years when The Holy Spirit wrestled with the heart of mankind to change his ungodly ways to God’s ways; the cup was filling up. There are a lot of things in our world currently that are not happening God’s way. But God always gives us time to change before he acts in judgement.

There are many examples of the pouring out of this cup in Scripture and it always involves the Divine Delay of Judgement – The longsuffering of God. In Genesis15 there is God’s message to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the promised land of Canaan. But he makes an interesting comment about a time frame that had to be fulfilled before this could come to pass. He said that there would be a delay of 400 years because the cup of iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. God gives people time to mend their ways and to repent. Here he gives the land of Canaan 400 years. This is called the longsuffering of God. So why the Amorites (Amos uses ‘Amorites’ to mean the whole land of Canaan). The answer is because they were people just like us, but who chose to live in wickedness, for example, they worshiped many gods and goddesses practising immoral rituals and they made idols to these gods. They even offered their children as human sacrifices to the god of Molech. But God was still longsuffering and yet they did not change their ways. Then Israel came out of Egypt under Moses and finally, a little after 400 years Abraham’s descendants became God’s instrument of judgement upon the Canaanites and possessed the Promised Land.

Then there is one other example – when Jonah the prophet of Israel was told to preach to Nineveh and madly protesting – They were cruel and murderously evil - so why Nineveh? Why not just judge them? Well…Judge them for what? They had to be told about God by Jonah in order to repent. And they did- so was it then godly Nineveh forever? No they fell away after a while. So what’s the point? The point is that is the story of God and humanity. It is the story of what is happening in the earth globally at this very moment. Many nations have heard about God. Some nations may come out of the experience of this cup from God as more godly and some less – some people more godly and some less. And there will be a divide between the two. God will be present in his people with more power, and darkness will assert itself with more intensity.

This is a time for light to shine. When God allows a catastrophic occasion to occur, like the one we are in the grip of right now, he causes things to be brought into the light that were hidden, and exposes the greed and corruption of power and control that usurps God’s place of power and command over the lives of mankind. This is what is happening in the earth today with the current shaking of the global Corona virus pandemic which is bringing a halt to all the perceived control and entitlement of the agendas of the proud and oppressive. His heart in these times of judgement, or crisis in which we live, is always to redeem the hearts of people. Let’s read the full Psalm.

Psalm 75:2 God says, “At the time I have planned, I will bring justice against the wicked. When the earth trembles and its people live in turmoil, I am the one who keeps its foundations firm. “I warned the proud, ‘Stop your boasting!’ I told the wicked, ‘Don’t raise your fists! Don’t raise your fists in defiance at the heavens or speak with such arrogance.’” For no one on earth—from east or west, should raise a defiant fist. It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall For the Lord holds a cup in his hand that is full of wine mixed with spices. He pours out the wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink it, draining it to the dregs. But as for me, says David, I will always proclaim what God has done; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. For God says, “I will break the strength of the wicked, but I will increase the power of the godly.” (Some nations will come out of this calamity in a more godly way than others)

The time for light to shine Isaiah 60: 1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light.

• Peter Blanchard , from Northwestern University in the USA, a co-author on the study of a supernova explosion tells us of a huge explosion of a supernova, recorded in The Australian 14/4/2020

“This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova.” Blanchard then writes. In a typical supernova, the radiation is less than 1 per cent of the total energy, but in SN2016, we found the radiation was five times the explosion energy of a normal-sized supernova. This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova.” To become this bright, the explosion must have been much more energetic than usual. By examining the light spectrum, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the explosion was powered by a collision between the supernova and a massive shell of gas, shed by the star in the years before it exploded. “While many supernovae are discovered every night, most are in massive galaxies,” said Peter Blanchard. “This one immediately stood out for further observations because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We weren’t able to see the galaxy where this star was born.

There is light in the universe, in the midst of darkness right now. So we can accept the cup of the new covenant and be joined even more closely to Jesus and to one another. We can accept the cup of suffering and bear one another’s burdens and know that God is bearing ours. And we can be a light and a hope for those who are suffering without hope and without help. Pray for God to continue to fill you with the Holy Spirit and that he will pour out his Spirit on those who are crying out to him at this time.

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RESURRECTION In the in the last podcast I did called ‘From the cross to the grave’, Jesus had come to visit those prisoners of time in Paradise. So this account of the Resurrection could be called ‘From the grave to the sky’. The bible says that Jesus then preached to all those prisoners of time the message of the plan of Father (The Gospel) in sending him to cancel sin and to bring new life, and to lead captivity captive by setting prisoners free from the captivity of time - waiting as captives for heaven to come to them. Many listened and many heard. The Scriptures speak of this moment about Jesus. 1Peter 3:18 He died once for the sins of all us guilty sinners although he himself was innocent of any sin at any time, that he might bring us safely home to God. But though his body died, his spirit lived on, and it was in the spirit that he visited the spirits in prison and preached to them-- spirits of those who, long before in the days of Noah, had refused to listen to God, though he waited patiently for them while Noah was building the ark. Jesus sat with Noah, and Adam and Eve, and Moses, and Abraham and many many others in Paradise, talking and resting with them. He was to wait there until the end of the third day.

It was toward the end of that third day when suddenly everyone’s conversation began to fall off and diminish into silence. All faces looked up and around as if to detect and determine what that sound was and where it came from. It was beautiful music that danced with itself on waves of exuberant joy. It surged and tumbled about them and was then overlaid with a swell of magnificent singing which became stronger and louder as hosts of flying angels swept into their presence. Jesus stood to greet the two chief angels, and it was then that he was given a set of two keys. These were the keys of hell and death (Rev.1:18). With one of the keys darkness would one day be locked away and set aside for another encounter, reserved for an appointed day at the end of time. With the other key he would now unlock the prisoners of the past from their patient pause and take many into an eternal heaven.

When Jesus turned the key of freedom in the prison gate a tremor hit the universe. Power from Father and Holy Spirit in heaven was released into and through Jesus to overcome death and that changed the nature of every atom of matter in existence and brought all things that existed into a new kind of union with Jesus. Prior to this moment, all of creation was separate to the creator. That separation was there from the start and caused mankind to go his own way and miss the mark of going the way of God – and that is sin. This is known as the law of sin and death in humanity. but now Jesus, who had now overcome this law of sin and death has made a new way open for humanity to walk in God’s ways in the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Now that our creator Jesus has joined himself to his creation in humanity we can rise above this separation called the law of sin and death. The Bible says that the whole creation is groaning for this glory to be fully manifested and that we groan within ourselves also for its complete fulfillment which will be at the end time resurrection. Romans 8:23

The time came for them to leave and Jesus led them on a triumphant upward journey, to their new home, his home. The entire company was escorted by Michael and Gabriel and the hosts of angels around them as they ascended ever upwards until they reached the earth, from where they, and he most recently, had come. There they all stopped for a brief period of time, because there were things for Jesus to do there. The first thing that he had to do was to go to his tomb where his earthly body lay in its shroud. Michael and Gabriel flew before Jesus to the tomb and found the guards there that the temple priests had appointed to stand watch at the tomb. As the angels alighted the ground shook and the massive stone rolled away as a huge burst of lightning hit the place sending the guards reeling headlong to the ground. They leapt up in fright and bolted. Jesus entered his tomb and united himself again to the wounded shell of his body, leaving the headpiece and shroud lying separated from one another in the tomb (John 20:7).

Michael and Gabriel waited inside the tomb while Jesus walked bodily from the temporary resting place, out into the garden. He walked about, recalling vividly the events that had so recently taken place nearby. He remembered his time of kneeling in an agony of prayer, when he accepted his cup of unbearable suffering. A very strange thing was also happening in other parts of Jerusalem. Hundreds of souls who had just accompanied Jesus from below and who had recently died were making the briefest of appearances to their loved ones (Matthew 27:52). At that same time some women had prepared oils and spices to anoint Jesus’ body. On their way to the tomb they were discussing the problem of how to move the huge stone that covered the entrance. When they arrived they were astonished to see that it had been moved and the guards were nowhere to be seen. They peered inside the tomb and were met by the majestic appearance of Michael and Gabriel, sitting in the place where Jesus had been laying.

”Are you looking for Jesus? Gabriel said. He has come back to life as he said he would. Go and tell the disciples that he will be coming to see them, and that they are to wait for him in Galilee.”

The women ran to tell the disciples but one of them dropped behind and walked slowly through the garden, still confused and weeping. She almost collided with Jesus who was also walking in the garden, and she apologized, not recognizing him, thinking he was the gardener. But he called her by her name and said,“ It's alright Mary, it's me, it really is.”

When she recognized him she ran towards him but he held up his hand and said, “Please do not hold me because I cannot be touched until I have presented the complete offering of my body and blood to my Father (Leviticus 23:9-16). I will be back with you very soon, so go and tell the others.”

Jesus then regrouped with all those he had set free and the magnificent procession began to move in splendor with its escort of glorious angels, from the grave to the sky. As their ascension took them closer and closer to the throne room a mighty voice could be heard proclaiming, “Open up gates, and let the King of Glory come in.” (Psalm 24:7-10)

At this command the heavenly music began. The sound of thousands of pipes, the voices of hundreds of harmonies, the deepest of vibrating bass and the ascending range of every stringed instrument created a majestic symphony. The cascading melody and the volumes of resonance pulsed with rhythm, flooding and receding in this moment of triumph. Jesus had come home.

Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he sustains everything in the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…

Ephesians 1:19-21. how vibrant and powerful is that divine energy that comes from God to us when we simply believe that he is the creator and generator of this supernatural power 20. Which exploded into reality when he raised Jesus from the dead and took him into heaven to sit next to him at his right hand. 21. This heavenly place and position took Jesus as God and man above any other force or realm of authority that can be named, whether on earth or in the heavens…and he has become the center of all consequence and meaning in the universe.

Father led Jesus to a throne in the throne room, and sat him at his right hand, where the most glorious of all crowns was placed upon his head, which still bore the marks of the cruel wreath of thorns from his flogging. All the angels and all those who had come with him on the upward journey beheld their king in his place of honor. Those of the faithful company who had waited throughout time also took their places of honor in their new home and joined in the magnificent celebration. Jesus’ time in heaven for these celebrations was momentary, as he had left the tomb just before dawn and had to return to earth that same day. He would now spend forty days on earth to seal The Plan of his Father and see it implemented for the rest of time. At the end of those forty days he would return to heaven, and would begin his new mission upon the planet.

Holy Spirit had accompanied Jesus every moment of his life on earth. He had joined himself to the human spirit of Jesus and had felt every feeling that Jesus had felt. He had known every one of his thoughts, and he had communicated every thought from Father God to him. Those thoughts became words in Jesus mouth, and Spirit caused those words to have life and power to all who heard Jesus speak. In this way Holy Spirit had also experienced life within humanity on the earth. In forty days time, after Jesus’ returned back to heaven Holy Spirit would become the bond between heaven and earth for all time. He would fall like rain from heaven upon the souls of mankind, seeking to awaken the spirit of humanity to the cosmic truth of what Jesus had done in joining mankind to God. This would now become the mission of God.

Within the contradiction of the experience that we call human life, there would exist at one and the same time the cry for, and the resistance to, the oneness of spirit with God for which mankind was created. And within the human pain of this struggle would be found the cry of Holy Spirit wrestling to join the minds and hearts of people to God. This struggle and wrestle would exist throughout time as the Spiritual energy of God’s love that would never cease its activity in the hearts of humanity. It would be the sign of the divine heart exercising its love in the subduing of human nature that it might resonate with the nature of God. Whenever this truth would be embraced by a human heart, that heart would at last find itself at home, around the Family table, where it was destined eternally to be.

That same day Jesus returned to earth in a glorified body that could never ever die again. Mark 16:9 After that, He appeared in another form (heteros morphe – an altered form or nature) to two of them as they walked and went into the country. It was without the constraints of a limited physical body, but it could be seen and recognized as a natural body. In this spiritual yet natural body Jesus could appear anywhere and at any time. He could feel and be touched, could breathe and eat, and walk and talk, all of which he did when he resumed his earthly visit. He came back and saw again the bewilderment and confusion in this world of uncertainty that people cling to so fervently, and he wanted to see all this change. He arrived in Jerusalem and heard that the temple priests had fabricated a story that his body had been stolen by the disciples and that they had overcome the temple guards and raided the tomb. He also heard that his disciples were still doubting that he had risen from the dead, even though some of them had come to the tomb and seen it empty, and some women had spoken to the angels.

He set off walking from Jerusalem in the direction of Galilee, where he had said he would meet with his disciples. It was then that he saw the two men walking together in serious discussion and he recognized them (these were the men mentioned in that Scripture about Jesus appearing in another form). They were men who had often come to listen to him and ask questions along with the other disciples. He greeted them and joined them as they walked, but Holy Spirit had supernaturally veiled their eyes from recognizing him. He listened as they spoke and detected the same mood of bewilderment, if not depression, that seemed to be hanging over everybody. He politely commented that they seemed to be bothered about something that was going on locally, and he asked what that might be.

The one called Cleopas gave Jesus a puzzled look and said to Jesus that he must be the only visitor in Jerusalem that hadn’t heard about what had happened. So when Jesus asked Cleopas to spell out what he meant the two men smiled at each other and the other man began to patiently explain about the man called Jesus, a great man whom they had both followed and believed in. They enthusiastically recounted some of the miracles he had worked, and that he was a prophet, the greatest of them all. Cleopas broke in and added that Jesus stood up for justice, and taught them about God. They thought he was going to turn the world upside down and make everything new for them. Jesus pushed them further for more details and they said they had expected that there would be freedom and prosperity for the Jews for a start.

There was a pause, then one of them gave a sigh and told Jesus how the temple priests had convicted Jesus as a criminal and how he was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and that today was the third day since these things happened. When Jesus asked them to explain the significance of the third day the two men looked at one another awkwardly and one of them shrugged and said that the man Jesus had said he would rise from the dead after three days. Cleopas took up the story again and explained that some of the women even went to the tomb and found it empty and reported they saw two angels who said he was alive, and that some of his very own disciples also went to the tomb and found it empty. He too shrugged as he finished talking.

Jesus nodded and remained silent for a few paces as he walked alongside the two men. He then very pointedly asked them why on earth they didn’t just believe what they had been told by Jesus himself. The other man condescendingly and a little impatiently, replied that they hadn't seen anything, so what were they expected to believe? It was then that Jesus quietly declared to them that the time was coming when they would believe even though they didn’t see. He then began to speak about all the Scriptures concerning himself. He spoke in detail of the Plan of Father to send The Son into the world. He taught them from the words of Scripture about prophesies which outlined the details of his birth, and his life and death, and his resurrection. Something happened in their hearts as they listened to him, and the time flew by, and the next thing they knew they were close to Emmaus, which was their destination.

They didn't want Jesus to stop talking so they appealed to him to stay with them, even though he told them he was going further. They asked him to at least stay and have a meal, so Jesus accepted their offer. During the meal Jesus took some bread, and gave thanks for it, and as he broke the bread their eyes were opened and immediately they recognized who he was. This was the ordinary, extraordinary moment, sitting at a table, life happening, very natural yet very spiritual, eye to eye heart to heart. Jesus heard Father speaking to him from heaven, telling him that this was the way it was going to be. Holy Spirit would be the one who would open their eyes to see him and know him as he really was, and that was the way The Plan would be implemented from heaven to earth. Jesus then heard Holy Spirit whisper to him; “People will speak the truth about you, and I will reveal you to them.” The next moment Jesus vanished from their sight

After Jesus vanished from their sight the two men decided to go back into Jerusalem and find the disciples who were in hiding, afraid of what was going to happen to them because of the rumors that were going about that they had stolen Jesus’ body. They found them and were whisked inside and the doors were locked behind them. They told them of their journey with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and their miraculous meal with him where he had suddenly vanished. The disciples were ecstatic that Jesus was back from the dead, and while they were still talking Jesus appeared in their midst while the doors remained locked. The disciples panicked, and thought they were seeing a ghost, but Jesus explained to them that he was not a ghost because a ghost didn’t have bones and flesh, and he asked them to touch his hands and his feet and to see for themselves.

Jesus stretched forth his hands and his peace hit their hearts. He breathed his Spirit upon them and they received the impartation of his peace. That peace is also the air we can breathe and other people can catch that from those who live and breathe this life within them. They immediately felt at one with Jesus and with each other. But this was just a mere foretaste of what was to come, as it would only be after his final ascension and being seated at the right hand of Father that Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell within them. On the day of Pentecost Holy Spirit would be sent from Father and from himself upon all humanity.

He could still see their bewilderment, and he knew he had to convince them in some ordinary way that he was real and alive again. So he asked them if he could have something to eat. James scurried to the fire and brought back some steamed fish, and some honeycomb, and held the mixed platter out at arm's length as Jesus accepted it and ate it with gusto. He looked around the room and noticed that Thomas was not amongst them. He asked them why they didn't go to Galilee where he said he would be going to meet them. They shuffled about without giving an answer, and Jesus told them he would see them in a few days at Galilee, and he vanished once more.

The disciples gathered at Galilee where they used to gather in the large boat shed that belonged to James and John's fisherman father, where they tended to the boats and net repairs. It was situated snugly in a grove overlooking the beach. Peter had been waiting with the others and had then become restless and asked James and John to come fishing with him to get some food for Jesus to eat. While the three were out fishing Jesus suddenly appeared to the others as they sat patiently, waiting for his arrival. When Thomas saw Jesus appear he walked hesitatingly towards him and stopped in front of him. Jesus knew that Thomas had not believed that he had risen, even after the other disciples had said that they had seen him. Jesus held out his hands towards Thomas and told him to touch his hands where the nails had pierced, and to touch his side where the Centurion’s lance had entered his side. Thomas broke down and wept, and told Jesus that he believed. Jesus gently acknowledged his faith, that in seeing and touching he now believed. He went on to tell Thomas that there would be many who will believe without even seeing him and that they would be greatly blessed for that kind of faith. Jesus comforted him and he disappeared again.

Jesus appeared to them again one morning after seven of them had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. He stood on the shore and watched them fishing but they didn't realize that it was him. He shouted out to the fishermen from the shore, asking them if they had yet caught anything. A disgruntled ‘No’ came from Peter to this expert on the seashore, who responded to Peter by telling him to cast his net on the other side of the boat. Peter was about to explode when he heard John cry out that the expert on the seashore was indeed Jesus, The Lord. Peter then yelled to the others to do what Jesus had said. So they threw the nets to the other side and began to pull so many fish into the boat that they could hardly keep the boat afloat. But by this time Peter had plunged into the sea, swimming for all his might to get to his friend on the seashore, leaving the crew on the boat to work together on the haul. When Peter lurched his way up onto the shore he headed straight for Jesus and collapsed in front of him. He saw that Jesus had already prepared a fire with burning coals and had fish and toasted bread ready for them to eat. He didn't ask Jesus how he got the fish. Jesus reached down and helped Peter into a sitting position and told him to go and get some more fish from the catch so they could make breakfast for the others.

After they had all enjoyed breakfast together Jesus called Peter aside. He knew there were things that had to be said between them. Peter’s soul was in a turmoil of regrets, shame and guilt. Time and again he had asked himself why he didn’t stand up for Jesus instead of disowning him three times when he was asked if he knew him, and could that have made a difference? He had remembered when the rooster crowed that Jesus had predicted that he would do just that. What was Jesus going to say to him now – would Jesus disown him, even rebuke him three times? But Jesus asked Peter three times, in three different ways whether or not Peter loved him. The love of Jesus owned Peter, and Peter passionately gave himself up to the ownership of God’s love. As a true representation of a flawed humanity owned by God’s love, Peter was mercifully forgiven and accepted. It was also this moment that owned him, not the past, or uncertainty of the future. This would also continue to be his greatest gift to God, the giving of each moment. After having his spirit and soul fed with this Word of love from Jesus, repeated three times, Peter was commissioned three times to feed God’s lambs and feed his sheep. As Peter would go on in life, he would face his many imperfections, and he would learn to return to each present moment, as in that special moment, where he could surrender to the ownership of love, shed his fears, and grow in faith as a participator in God’s nature.

Jesus met with hundreds of people over those forty days, but on the final day he gathered with just over a hundred of his disciples and followers, including his mother. Jesus then took the eleven disciples aside to give them some final instructions. He told them to go into Jerusalem and to wait for Holy Spirit’s empowerment. They were to wait in the same room in which he celebrated the Passover feast with them, the night he was taken captive. He then told them about the fulfillment of The Plan.

Jesus explained to them that Father had always wanted to have a family of sons and daughters to share his love with them - the same way that Father had shared his love with Jesus himself. Lucifer had tried to block this Plan from the beginning of time by blinding the mind of humanity with darkness, causing a chasm of separation from the living God to exist in their minds and to devise independence in their souls. But Jesus had overpowered darkness and Holy Spirit would come to them and bring them the power of the life that he now lived. He told them he would join their lives to his risen life and they would become one in Spirit with him. Holy Spirit would take Father’s love, and his own words, and place them in the hearts of men and women, as a deep consciousness of indwelling abiding life. He told them they would together be as his body in the World, and each in their own way, gifted with grace and faith from Heaven. People and things that happened around them would change, as they themselves became more and more changed into being more like him.

A dazzling light shone within a billowing white cloud above them. Jesus turned to them all and raised his hands in blessing. He did not need to say goodbye. As he began to rise slowly heavenwards he was enveloped in the cloud, and as they stood together looking into the cloud that had taken him they saw the shining figures of Michael and Gabriel standing to one side (Acts 1:10). Gabriel told them that the same cloud that they saw taking Jesus into eternity would also bring him back one day - in total glory and triumph, and The Plan will have been fulfilled.

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FROM THE CROSS TO THE GRAVE

Pontius Pilate asked the Centurion to command an escort of guards around Jesus to take him to Calvary, or Golgotha, which means The place of the Skull. One of the Centurion's men put the beam on Jesus' bleeding shoulder as they left the yard and went into the crowded street. The already large crowd continued to grow, some of them followers and friends, others bitter enemies, and yet others who were just confused and angry. Jesus staggered and buckled under the weight of the beam but he continued to drag it behind him. It was the custom to write a description of the crime committed on a clay plate and fix it to the top of the cross. Pontius Pilate had written an inscription that read, “THE KING OF THE JEWS” An angry voice called out above the crowd “Who wrote that stupid inscription?” One of the temple priests shouted back “It should say ‘He said he was king of the Jews’” Pilate stepped forward “I wrote that inscription and it stays as it is,”.

A few paces further on Jesus staggered again but this time fell headlong to the ground. Some women rushed forward to help him and Centurion recognized Mary, as she tried to reach out and help her son. Centurion was seized with compassion as he touched her sorrow. He could see blood flowing freely from Jesus now and he knew that he had to keep him on his feet. He must not let Jesus die here on the street. A burly lumbering man who, by the look of his clothing was visiting from some other region, kept close by Jesus as he stumbled forward, and the man balked now and again, as if to reach out and grasp hold of the beam, only to pull back. Centurion called out to the man. “You, help him. He is too weak to carry that on his own.” The man from Cyrene leapt forward and took the beam. The peace that surged through his heart overcame the strain of the heavy burden, as he strode on into endless time. The trek to Calvary, with its frequent stops took just under an hour from the time Centurion picked Jesus up in the yard. The process of crucifixion had begun, but it would take many more hours on Calvary for Jesus to die.

John saw Mary walking falteringly up an incline with her companions and he went over and helped her. She saw him coming, and turning, she held out her hand for him to help her up the slope. Mary asked John to stay close by her, and he assured her that he would. John didn’t know where the others were - he just knew that they were hanging back from the crowd a little, and like them he did not comprehend the fulness of what Jesus actually wanted to achieve - Their beloved leader whom they didn’t fully know how to follow.

As John and Mary reached the flat terrain at the top of Calvary they could hear the dull clink of hammers beating against metal, bone, and timber, mingled with the muffled sound of agony. Two other criminals were already hanging on crosses either side of the hole where Jesus pole was to be fixed, but these two men were tied to their crosses, not nailed. Jesus was finally hoisted up and then the pole was crudely dumped into the hole prepared for it. Some time was spent securing its placement so that it stood erect and stable in the rocky ground. A range of utterances rushed from the mouths of people standing watching when the cross fell into place and when the nails tugged on the body they were pinned into. Some of the sounds were stifled cries of shock and dismay while others were more like startled yells of alarm. But overriding these noises was the swelling chant of taunts and slogans coming from the crowd. Then the priests and the leaders of the Jews joined in the chant. “You were pretty good at saving others, but you can’t even save yourself. If you are the Promised One, our Messiah, then come on down from that cross and prove it to us.” Weren’t you going to pull down our temple and rebuild it again in three days? Well why not get yourself down from that cross?”

John winced when he heard Jesus splutter as a soldier tried to push a sponge of sour wine and myrrh into Jesus' mouth. Jesus turned his face aside and refused the swab. Centurion ordered the soldier away and the man joined the other soldiers who were throwing dice to see who was going to keep Jesus’ robe. Dust was spitting itself into peoples' faces on this strangest of days and gusts of wind blew as storm clouds raced faster than usual across the sky, causing a flickering of sunshine and deep shadow. As Jesus hung there the criminals beside him were weakening, groaning in their pain, when one of them turned to Jesus. He had earlier on joined the choir of obscenity, picking up the ugly chant with gusto. He now wanted to have his last few words of bravado heard in this dark prison of life and death he had made for himself. “They're telling you to get yourself down, but how about us? That would be a real miracle, even I would believe you.” He was delighted with the impression this made on the crowd, as they clapped and cheered him, but the man on the other side shouted at him angrily.” “Are you mad? Don't you even fear God? Don't you know who this is? We deserve to be here but he doesn’t. He has never done a wrong thing.” He then turned to Jesus and said. “Lord, will you remember me when you are in your mighty kingdom?” Jesus turned his head and looked at him with love and said, “Today you are coming home with me to Paradise.

John put his arm around Mary's shoulders as she looked on, with tears rolling down her cheeks and her countenance numbed from all expression. John tried to shield Mary from watching but she pulled away from him. She remembered tending his little body when he was a baby, that life that was part of her life. It was then that Jesus looked down at his mother standing next to John. He spoke to her through parched lips. “Mother let him be your son.” His head then turned towards John. Mary looked at John and clung on to his arm. “Son let her be your mother.” John stood with her and watched her son's life draining from him. As they stood shielding their faces from the biting dust that came in bursts, and their eyes from the intermittent dazzle of the sun, they were astonished to see the sun dimmed and the dazzle become a weak gleam. High noon surrendered to a deep darkness which remained for three full hours. Darkness has an authority that can intrude into any company and announce that it is now taking over whatever else is happening. It will put a stop to things. If there is noise and commotion, sudden darkness will announce silence. People who thought they were in a crowd suddenly feel alone, and they look into the gloom for one another and move closer together. Darkness took over that day, in those hours. Shouts of bravado that just moments ago would have roused audacious echoes now hung hollow in the still air. Those mockers that had stood close to the action at the foot of the cross now slid back into the crowd, and nervous fear could be seen in many eyes.

Lucifer was watching from the headquarters of darkness above, waiting impatiently to hurl darkness at the one who was the sum of all goodness and light upon the earth. That darkness would have to wait its turn in the gloom for three more hours. Even the carrion crows and the ravens hung in the air queuing up to eat, because it was the tradition to leave the bodies hanging on the crosses to rot. Lucifer was exhilarated with the absolute certainty of this impending triumph, and he desperately wanted to close this chapter, shut the book and throw it into the vast domain of refuse he had accumulated over his destructive existence. This was to be the treasure of his trash. His plan was to attack the mind of Jesus, that place in all of humanity which he had chosen as his battleground. He would attempt to wrench all hope from his heart and plunge him into despair, where he assumed that Jesus would have no way back into his hope or his faith, let alone his love.

There were Angels suspended within this pall of sadness that shrouded the desolation below. It was something like the tranquility of that first day of creation, when darkness covered the earth and The Three spoke light and life into existence. There was the same unmoving basin of profound energy poised to create all light, beauty and movement, into the darkness below. So heaven waited in eternity and three hours of darkness passed on earth.

Lucifer shot himself like a dart into the one that hung between two criminals on a lonely plateau of the place of the Skull. The gigantic spirit of Jesus absorbed the full impact of Satan as all hell's hateful fury hit him, and as every vile thing ever done by countless millions of crippled hearts down through the ages and for the ages to come assailed his being. Thunder cracked and the earth began to shake. The magnitude of this kind of collision, the sum of all sin hitting the sum of all innocence, shakes all created things. Jesus felt that all hope of overcoming that bank of injustice was futile, but he hoped against all hope and steeled himself to go on. He then sensed what seemed like a swirling sea billowing somewhere beneath the faculties of his mind and will. The feeling clawed at him. It was the swirling sea of fear, and it came from the armory of Satan. The fear sought to pull him under but Jesus hoisted the banner of his faith above it and kept it flying there with absolute trust in his Father's love, while phantom images of horror assaulted his mind and imagination. His great spirit swallowed every vile accusation that Satan hurled at him, and he took them all into himself and locked them safely within the vault of his love. He owned it all. He had become the reservoir of all evil in one moment of time, and he was completely innocent of any one wrong deed.

He rallied his strength once more, but a missile of horror careened into him more powerfully and more deadly than anything before, sweeping over him and submerging him into an impotence and a canceling of all hope. But this was not from Lucifer, it was from his home in heaven. It was black and fathomless, nothingness. It was like annihilation, `This was the cup that he told Father he would accept. But he did not know it would be like this. He called out to Father. “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” He knew the answer to his question. He had become forsaken for a moment so that no living soul from this time on would ever have to feel forsaken by God again because of their human weakness. As he hung there he embraced the tragic weakness of humanity and touched the feelings of every human soul throughout all ages. The vast bank of love that filled heaven filled his heart and went out to a beloved humanity. He looked at the mocking faces standing round the cross and he loved them. He sent his voice into a waiting heaven and cried out. “Father forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing.” He had done it. It was finished. The Plan OF SALVATION could now be put into effect.

Jesus had something more to say but his throat was parched and he wanted to speak with strength. “I'm thirsty,” he croaked out. The Centurion, who was ever there on duty, called the soldier over who had shoved the sponge in Jesus' face earlier. “Give him the wine sponge” he ordered. The soldier jumped to the command and put the sponge up on a pole to Jesus, who could now say loudly and clearly what had to be said in his last moments. “Father into your hands I now offer my Spirit.” Then in one last gasp he shouted loudly for all about him to hear. “It is finished!” Then he died. And he and we were placed securely in The Father's loving hands.

Who brought about the death of Jesus? Was it Jesus, His Father, The Jews, The Romans, our sin? All of these played very significant parts, and there are Scriptures for each of their roles. But it was finally Jesus;

John 10:15… and I lay down My life for the sheep… 17. Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This command I have received from My Father.” John 12:23 But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

At the moment of his death the cosmos convulsed. An earthquake tore a searing gash into the mountainside and people were toppled off their feet. Rocks split apart and the graves and tombs on a nearby hill cracked open. People ran in fear from the place, but they did not know where to go. At that moment there were priests in the temple about to sacrifice the Passover lamb. At the very moment that the knife pierced the sacrificial animal the priests were thrown off their feet by the earthquake. The temple shook as huge stones fell from the parapets and the great veil in the temple proper, which separated the place of God’s presence from the rest of the temple was lightning torn from top to bottom. The priests fled in panic as tempest swirled through the city.

Lucifer’s dark mind was being assaulted by a force he had not felt before. It was a desperate feeling of failure and futility. What was going wrong? Jesus was dying with a magnificent hope, not a dark and dreadful despair. The offering of Jesus’ spirit to Father God had released a tangible power into the universe. Lucifer turned to the three dark archons who always accompanied him and shouted. “Let's get out of here, something’s wrong.”

He tried to flee back into the darkness but a huge bolt of lightning from the throne room gathered him up and catapulted him downwards. He was traveling face down at a furious speed, and for a split second he thought he saw a burning lake beneath him. It struck him with horror, and he believed he must have imagined it. He was turned on his back and drawn up with the same speed into the darkness above, and then turned back onto his face as he found himself again being plummeted downwards.

The carrion crows were in for a disappointment that day. They were not to know that the next day was the Sabbath, and that it was against temple law for dead bodies to be left hanging on a holy day, so all the criminals had to be dead before sundown and taken off their crosses. The two criminals who were tied to their crosses were still a long way from death so Centurion had his men break their legs that they would die quickly. The Centurion then had the task of ascertaining if Jesus was indeed dead. He called over one of his guards. “Give me a lance,” he commanded. He took the shaft and instructed the guard on how to plunge it into Jesus body, under his heart, where the pericardial sac would have amassed his body fluids if he had expired. Water gushed out and the Centurion knew the day's work was done. He knew that this man was indeed the Son of God.

Pilate had received a report that Jesus was dead but he wanted to confirm the certainty of this from the centurion whom he knew was there at the time. This was because Pilate had been told that someone from Arimathea, a man called Joseph, was making arrangements for the burial. The Centurion confirmed all this and that this Joseph was a very wealthy man and wanted Jesus buried in his own tomb that had just been hewn out in a prestigious place in Jerusalem, practically in the temple itself. He told Pilate that some women followers had a shroud prepared and anointing oils and spices.

Pilate asked if Jesus had to be clubbed to death, and the Centurion said no, and explained that they we had to club the others, the ones who were tied, but not Jesus who was nailed, and that it was hardly surprising after the beating he was given. He told Pilate that Jesus died without them breaking one bone of his body. Early the next day Pontius Pilate received a visit from the leaders of the temple priests and lawgivers who were anxious that the followers of Jesus might conspire to take his body from the tomb and try to fabricate a story that he had been resurrected, because they had heard that he had said he would come back to life after three days. They insisted that guards be placed at the tomb to prevent this from happening. Pilate advised them to appoint their own temple guards at the tomb, and they agreed to this.

So now we go from the cross to the grave.

The Prince of Darkness now realized that this man’s body, which had just been destroyed on Calvary had contained no fault or sin, and therefore could no longer be kept captive in this lower world. Jesus again recalled what had been written in the Psalms. You will not let my soul rest in the grave, you will not let your Holy One see destruction. (Psalm 16:10)

As Jesus hung on the cross and offered his spirit to his Father he felt his spirit being lifted up above his body. From there he saw the scene on Calvary and all the people standing around, still looking at his dead body hanging on the cross, and he saw the Centurion call for the lance. He also saw the bolt of lightning and Lucifer being caught in it and hurled downwards. He then began to travel downwards himself, and knew he was on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades (Luke 16:19).

Jesus descended to these places. Paradise was where there were millions of souls who had been waiting for him from the beginning of time. These had lived their lives on earth in hope, many of them guided by the Commandments through Moses, but many simply by a good conscience, God having written law upon their hearts. They were locked away from eternity till eternity would now come to get them. He would also visit Hades, the grave, the prison of lost hope.

Lucifer had thought that all he had to do was get Jesus killed as a human being and Jesus would then be forever locked away from human life and from God life. When darkness entered our world at the fall of man human beings began to live spiritually separated in their minds from the Life of God (Ephesians 4:17). So Lucifer had laid claim to the ownership of physical death and spiritual separation of every human being. From that time of separation the Prince of darkness, the Prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, held sway over the minds of men (Ephesians 2:2). But death and spiritual separation could not demand payment for something it did not own. It did not own the perfection of the sinless life of the very virtue of God resident in Jesus’ body. The moment Jesus died a cosmic law of sin and death was overturned and became the cosmic law of the Spirit of life in Christ. To be continued…

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HOLY WEEK PART 2 THE LAST SUPPER THE GARDEN AND THE TRIAL We are continuing in the Holy Week series with part two, after Jesus had had the incident with the money changers, and the ensuing debates and confrontations with the temple priests and leaders. We are now looking at the Last supper and the events leading up to Jesus’ arrest and trial. Rather than simply reading the Scriptures I will tell these events as a story. The story is being taken from the book, The Plan, which I wrote a few years ago, and which is now out of print and that is a very good thing as I am doing a complete re-edit, because I was not happy with the book for several reasons. I think I used just a bit too much dialogue for a start, and I had also used different names for many of the characters to depict their character roles, instead of just calling them by their Biblical names. For instance the disciple Peter was called ‘rock disciple’ and Judas was ‘Troubled disciple’ and Pontius Pilate was ‘Proconsul’. This confused everyone - so hence the rewrite. I will do it as an eBook and it will be free of charge. That will be my atonement for trying to be too smart. So… Moving on…

…Then Jesus took the twelve aside and told them that he wanted to go and spend some time in prayer with his Father. He told them he wanted to share the Passover feast with them in the… evening and had already organized somewhere for them to have the meal, and Peter wanted to know where that place was. Jesus told Peter that he wanted he and John to go to the city square where they would find a water carrier with a pitcher of water on his shoulder, and that he would be looking out for them. Jesus told the others to go off and spend some time in prayer and preparation for the event, while he would pray by himself, and meet them back at the place where they now were.

The two disciples found the man carrying the pitcher of water in the square just as Jesus had said, and they followed him as he entered a two storey building where they met the owner of the house and he led them to the room that had been prepared for them. This man had been instructed by God in a dream to set aside the room and he had obeyed without question. After his time of prayer Jesus met with the others and they walked through the streets together the room. It was evening time and there was a large table set out with the Passover meal, and there they sat at the table with Jesus in the middle of them.

Passover was the festival time that celebrated the event of Moses bringing the Nation of Israel out of their slavery from Egypt. The Passover meal was not just a meal but a series of meals, interspersed with pauses for reflection and readings from the Scriptures in remembrance of the miraculous way God had freed them from their oppressors. After one of the meals, at which they ate roasted lamb and bitter herbs, Jesus stood up and went over to one of the sizeable washing bowls and taking off his outer robe he wrapped a large towel around himself and beckoned the disciples to come over to him. Peter was curious and wanted to know what Jesus was doing. Jesus said that he was going to wash their feet. “Not mine,” exclaimed Peter. The other disciples were also curious and uneasy. “Yes yours,” replied Jesus, “and all of the others too.” When he saw Peter balking and raising objections he stopped and stood up to face them all. He asked them if they remembered the time when they all became so angry with one another because James’ and John's mother wanted Jesus to give the highest places to her two sons next to him in his kingdom?” They all nodded, remembering it well. Nonetheless Jesus went over the lesson he had taught them that day, that if they wanted to have true authority they would serve one another, and if they thought that he had authority with them then they would let him serve them by washing their feet. He began to wash the disciples’ feet, and when he came to Peter, Peter protested. And refused to let Jesus wash his feet. “So you don’t want to be part of what I am doing?” Jesus said. “Of course I do. I’m sorry. Please Lord, wash my hands and my head as well.” “Just your feet Peter , here, in the bowl.” Jesus then continued to wash the feet of all the men, as they came forward one by one, some with tear streaked faces.

Heaven watched on silently and thousands of angels strained to see and to hear all that was being done and said in this most holy moment. They watched as their God cleansed a grimy unclean world from off those he loved, as he would for all who would let him do so down through the ages. When he had finished washing them he stood up again and said. “Now you are clean, but not all of you.” One of them wanted to know what he meant, so he asked them to come back to the table with him, where they would continue their meal.

After they had sat down he asked for the bread and wine to be served, and then he said plainly, “One of you will betray me.” They were all shocked, and began to discuss this amongst themselves, but then their distress overwhelmed them so they began to ask him one by one, “Is it me Master?” they pleaded anxiously, without getting a reply. John knew the depth of love that he himself had for Jesus and did not even question his own heart as to whether he might be the one, so he simply asked, “Who is it Lord?” Jesus saw their trouble and concern, so he said, “The one who dips his bread with me into the soup.” At that very moment Judas had his bread in the soup along with the bread in the hand of Jesus. The moment passed in the confusion and nothing appeared to register in the minds of the other disciples so Jesus let the moment pass, then Judas, feeling safe, said, “Is it me Lord?” “You said it.” Jesus handed him the piece of dipped bread from his own hand and said to him, “Go and do what you have to do.” Judas got up and grabbed the money bag and strode out, feeling euphoric with a heightened sense of mission in his newfound supremacy. The other disciples supposed that he had received instructions from their master concerning some arrangements about paying for the food, or giving to the poor that had been organized between them.

Jesus turned to the other disciples and took a large piece of bread from the bowl. They watched him as he broke it into twelve pieces, keeping one, and handing the rest around to the remaining eleven. “This is my body. This has been broken into pieces but when we eat it, it becomes one piece again, because we are one. Whenever you and those who come after you do this in the future, you will join yourselves to one another and to me, and I will be there with you. Unless you have my life in you, you will not know what life really is.” He took a cup of the ceremonial wine and drank from it, then passed it around for them all to drink. After they had finished it he said to them, ”This is my blood. Just as my body will be torn to pieces for you, so too will my blood be spilled for you. This is a sign of my life and of the new promise from God to give you and all of humanity our life to share, not just a life of rules and regulations, but our very divine life. Whenever people do this in the future I want them to remember that I died for them and that I will come back again at the end of time, in the full power and glory of my kingdom.”

Once again they recalled the things he had said to them about his coming back at the end of time. He had warned them of the things that would happen in the earth just before that mighty and awesome day when he would be seen by all the world coming in the clouds of heaven. They recalled his predictions of the earthquakes and natural disasters that would strike the earth, the rising tide of self interest and wars and terror, the epidemic of fear and hopelessness. They shuddered within themselves, and they were comforted by his presence.

The feast had come to an end and he stood and asked them to come with him into a garden near the olive grove, where he wanted them to pray with him. Jesus spoke to them. “In a few hours the temple leaders will arrest me and I will be put on trial. After my arrest you will all become terrified and desert me, but it will fulfill the Scripture which says that when the shepherd is struck the sheep will run in all directions.” Peter protested, “Even if everyone else deserts you I will never run,” and James and the others joined in the protest. Peter drew out his dagger, quickly followed by James. “These are two daggers,” said Peter, seeing James's drawn dagger, “and I will die with you before I let anyone take you away.” Jesus looked at Peter. “Satan is out to get you Peter, and before the night is over you will separate yourself from me in fear but I will be praying for you that your faith will remain strong. You will hear a rooster crowing in the morning, and when you hear it, it will be a stark reminder of what I just told you. And for now, you can both put your daggers away.” But Peter protested all the more, and Jesus let him talk on.

Jesus took the men to the garden area and asked Peter and John and James to accompany him further, motioning for the others to stay back. A little farther on he asked the three to wait and pray while he went on his own to pray to his Father. Finding a place, he fell on his face and began to quake inside with a peculiar dread. He would face torture and death in an unbearable and agonizing way. He would be totally alone, suffering the shame and reproach of a criminal. These thoughts tormented his mind and dried up his soul. Darkness tried to ride in on this torment. He began to sweat profusely, and he groaned, till he started to taste blood in his mouth. The blood dribbled down his chin, and then he saw droplets of blood on the backs of his hands. This was the cup of pain and sorrow that he was being asked to take. It was too much, and he begged for Father to take it away. He asked if there was some other way that he might accomplish what he had been sent to do, but he told Father that nonetheless he would do whatever he wanted him to. He staggered to his feet, and groped his way to where he had left the three. They were asleep. Jesus groaned again, and waking them up he pleaded with them. “Couldn't you have stayed awake and prayed? You know I am about to die, and I feel my life draining from me already, and I am almost overwhelmed by it. You need to pray too so that you will not be completely overwhelmed.” They spluttered out their apologies. He moaned and went back to his place and cried out to Father again, to never forsake him, but still the agony fastened itself to his soul. He asked Father again if there was any other way, and again he yielded his will to his Father.

After more suffering that became more than he could bear, he returned to the three, but they had fallen asleep again. He pleaded with them again not to go to sleep. They didn’t know what to say. Sleep had become their escape from the heaviness of their grief and sorrow. Father watched from heaven and shared his son's agony, knowing that this was the darkest hour that his son had ever known. Heaven’s angels watched with him and shared his sorrow. Father sent one of these faithful beings to comfort his Son. Jesus received the heavenly comfort then he sat up and looked to the heavens. “Father I have asked for you to take this cup from me, but because it is your will, I will go through whatever you wish.” He slumped back on his heels and buried his face in his hands and drew in strength.

Jesus found the three disciples asleep again, and just as he woke them there was the sound of a commotion a short distance away. The three men urged Jesus to come with them to a place of safety. ”No,” he said, “I have accepted Father's cup of suffering. We will go to meet this mob. Darkness is having its day and my betrayer is ready.” Just then the other disciples came rushing to meet Jesus and the three. Together they all walked to where a large party of troops and officers of the High Priest were advancing with lanterns and clubs. When they got close, Judas broke out from among the advancing party and came to Jesus, embracing him and kissing him on the cheek. “Is that a kiss of life or a kiss of death?” asked Jesus. “This is the one,” said Judas, pulling away from Jesus and melting back into the throng. An officer of the High Priest grabbed hold of Jesus by the shoulder to take him away, when a dagger flashed and glinted in the moonlight. Blood spurted from the side of the face of the officer and he shrieked in shock and pain, as his ear fell to the ground at his feet. Jesus looked into the angry face of Peter who stood there with a bloody dagger in his hand. The troops fell back and watched in wonder as Jesus picked up the ear and placed it firmly back on the lacerated face of the officer. The wound healed immediately and a gasp went up from everybody. “Put that dagger away Peter, I have angels that could do better than that, and wipe them all out in an instant.” He also gave a warning look to James who had his hand on the hilt of his dagger. He assured them that this had been written of him and was now coming to pass ( Psalm 41:9). Instead of being confronted by a belligerent usurper who wanted to seize a throne and a kingdom, these soldiers were met by the Prince of peace, who stood calmly in front of them and surrendered himself willingly. The officers led Jesus away to the chambers of the High Priest and the disciples scattered in fear and distress, just as Jesus had predicted. Two disciples followed at a distance however, John and Peter, and they mingled with the crowd gathering outside the High Priest's chambers where Jesus was put through a preliminary interrogation. John even went inside the porch where the crowd was swarming, and where people were talking animatedly, warming themselves around a fire.

Jesus had just previously told Peter that Satan desired to have him and to attack him at the point of his weakest inner fear. Even though Peter could draw a dagger and physically attack a guard, he could not cope with the shame of being associated with someone who would damage his reputation of being a loyal Jew, and the temptation of this besetting sin revisited him at later times in his ministry. Peter felt a spasm of horror hit him as the agent of destruction tried to overpower his being. He struggled against the violent evil force, but sensed a swirling sea of fear billowing somewhere beneath the faculties of his mind and will. He searched for faith but could only find fear. The fear became a terror and he was engulfed in the blackest moment of panic he had ever experienced, worse than any tempest at sea, or any phantom of some hideous dream, as everything and everyone about him became the source of some ghastly threat to his sense of who he wanted to be seen as by other people. He shrunk back into a shadow and hid himself, and in doing so he bumped into a slightly built young servant girl, gathering wood for the fire. She pointed at him and called out to the people standing nearby. “This is one of them, I saw him with the teacher – they’re both Galileans,” People began to come over to Peter and he cowered from them. “You are one of them aren't you?” the young girl said again. “No, never, I don't even know him. You must be mad.” He quaked inside himself. He was accused again of being one of Jesus' followers, and the third time he was accused he hurled back oaths and cursed them for being fools. By this time it was almost dawn, and the familiar sound of a rooster was heard crowing in the distance. Nobody took any notice, but Peter shrieked out in despair and fled from their midst, sobbing great sobs of desolation. He remembered the words of Jesus to him.

After the mockery of a trial before the High Priest and the council of elders , where Jesus was charged with blasphemy for threatening to destroy the Temple, Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate into the courtyard of the praetorium by the priests, the council, and hordes of the Jews. They demanded that Pontius Pilate come out to them and they shoved Jesus in front of him. He looked closely at Jesus for the first time and felt that his future was in this man's hands rather than the other way around. The crow Jews was growing in the courtyard below. They were quiet as they waited for the encounter. Pilate took Jesus inside, away from the eyes and ears of the crowd so that he could question him privately. He asked Jesus the most damning question he could devise, believing that Jesus would expertly deflect it. “Are you king over your people?” he asked confidently. “Yes I am,” answered Jesus, with dignity and humility, looking straight into Pilate’s eyes. Pilate was staggered. He expected some deft manoeuvre of words but Jesus had just delivered his own verdict of guilty as far as the Jews were concerned. “They are all accusing you, don't you have an answer? I am willing to listen to anything you say. Believe me I want justice for you, I do not wish you harm.” Jesus remained silent and Pilate admired this man more than ever. He had not witnessed anything like this before.

Pilate went out and tried to plead with the crowd to let Jesus go free, but to no avail. He heard someone shout loudly above the others that Jesus was from Galilee and had caused trouble in the Lake Region as well as in the city. “The Lake Region…Galilee…” Pilate repeated to himself. He stopped and thought quickly, and he knew he had the answer. He stood up and commanded silence. He addressed the leaders. “Is this man indeed from Galilee?” “Yes, that is where it all started,” They shouted back. Pilate realized that the Lake Region was in Herod’s jurisdiction. Herod had more immediate responsibility for the Jews than he did, and the matter could be put into his hands, and he just happened to be in Jerusalem at this time for the feast of Passover. He shouted to the crowd. “This man is in Herod's jurisdiction, not mine, so I am going to call him in to deal with it.” He felt relief sweep over him and he adjourned the hearing yet once more and returned to his rooms.

Jesus was sent to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem and Herod took control of the proceedings with relish. He had Jesus dressed up in mock royal robes and interrogated him, but Jesus did not say a word. He was punched and bullied by Herod’s guard of soldiers, but he received the indignation with total dignity and waited for Herod to give up his cruel game. Herod soon became bored with it all and sent Jesus back to Pontius Pilate.

Suddenly Pilate had a flash of brilliance. This was a special time of the year, the Feast of Passover, the time of the major festival of the Jews. Every year at this time Pontius Pilate had the authority to release a condemned criminal, no matter what his crimes were. He delayed the proceedings while he summonsed the worst criminal he had captive in the dungeon, a murderous killer, Barabbas, who was feared by the entire community. He would give them a choice - Jesus or Barabbas. He had Barabbas brought before the crowd and he was struck by the contrast between the two men standing before him. One man’s posture was cruel and menacing while the other man stood quiet and dignified, but the crowd’s one time hero had become a confusing embarrassment to them. Temple leaders had been going among the crowd stirring up the people against Jesus, using scorn or threats or whatever abusive tactic they could think of to turn the crowd’s baffled disappointment into resentment and rage. Their self proclaimed king had been reduced to a helpless bleeding failure before their eyes. Pontius Pilate shouted loudly to the crowd. “Who would you like me to release to you?” Shock hit his spleen like a dart as they clamored for Barabbas to be released - Barrabas, whose name ironically, means Son of the Father. He called for another adjournment. Pilate remembered his wife telling him she had had dreadful dreams that had to do with Jesus and had sent a messenger to warn him to have nothing to do with Jesus. He wanted to wash his hands of the whole matter. He went out there again to try and get some justice from the crowd.

Pilate stood nervously before the angry crowd. He held his hands out to them in a gesture of appeal. “What do you want me to do with this man?” he pleaded. “Crucify him,” shouted one of the temple leaders. Then the shout “crucify him” went up from the crowd. Pilate shouted back at them. “I find nothing wrong with this man, but if you want this to happen it must become your responsibility.” One of the leaders yelled back at him. “If you release this man you will be no friend of the Empire. Anyone who declares himself a king is a rebel against Caesar.” Still the cries went up demanding Jesus’ death. Pilate feared that he might have a riot on his hands and he didn’t want to provoke trouble for himself with his Empire superiors. He called for a bowl of water. When the water arrived he ceremoniously washed his hands in front of the angry mob. “I wash my hands of this matter. I am innocent of the blood of this just man.” “His blood can be on our hands,” they yelled back.

Pilate nodded lamely and called for Jesus to be taken by the guards into the Praetorium and scourged. The scourge or flail, was a leather handled whip with leather thongs or lashes woven into the braided handle. The guards wielded the scourges heavily, and some of the scourges had barbed lashes attached. As Jesus’ back became more and more bloody, the leather became blood soaked and heavier and cut more deeply into his skin. The lashes would not only cut into the back but whip around into the chest and stomach area, splitting the skin open. Jesus suffered in silence, which angered the bullies and fuelled their malicious energy. The guards made a cruel game out of mocking Jesus by jamming a wreath of thorny vines onto his head and driving them into his flesh. They took a purple robe and draped it over him and joked together as they took turns in bowing to him, pretending to hail him as a king. When the thugs had beaten Jesus severely, they brought him back to Pilate. Pilate tried once more to have the Jews relent. He presented the limp and bleeding figure of Jesus to the people once more, thinking that this might satisfy their blood lust. He shouted out to the crowd. “Here is your king. I find this man not guilty. The crowd shouted back, “He is not our king. Crucify him.” Pilate felt it was useless to take the matter any further so he handed Jesus over to be crucified

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Holy Week , that week during which Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey while crowds called out Hosanna, was also the week where he turned over the tables of the money changers, the week of the Last supper, the week where he was betrayed and where he agonised in the Garden of Gesthemane,. He was denied by Peter, put on trial, and crucified. That week was preceded by a build up of momentum over many weeks particularly as he began to appear more publicly in open conflict and debate with the Scribes and Pharisees, and where he was questioned by the many that followed him, wanting to know if he was indeed the Christ. But there was a certain particular activity that was significant to Jesus, and that was to do with the temple.

In the last months of his ministry Jesus placed an intense focus on the Temple. He made three visits to the temple from the month of November through to March the next year. The first visit was to the feast of Tabernacles, the second to the feast of Dedication (Hanukkah), and the third was to confront the money changers before the Feast of Passover when he was crucified. The temple was the place where God had ordained in the OT that he would meet with his people – this was his habitation. This was paramount for Jesus, who was in fact the living breathing walking temple who knew that his death and resurrection would mean that the material temple, called in Scripture the temple made with hands would no longer be where God met with his people. His temple would be us as the temple of the Holy Spirit just as Jesus had become this habitation of God in his own body while he was on the earth. Jesus is quoted in the New Testament as saying a Body you have prepared for me.

So each temple visit was not just a visit to church as a good religious Jew – no – Jesus had a distinct purpose for each visit because they were about what was happening to him, and about what would be happening to us – the new temple to be.

The first Temple visit was a secret visit when he attended the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast celebrated the miracle of the living water that flowed from out of the rock in the wilderness – the rock that Moses struck with his rod (Exodus 17:34). In the NT the Bible says ‘That rock was Christ). His visit to the Feast of Tabernacles was when Jesus stood and invited everyone to come to him to receive the Living Water, thus prophetically declaring the mystery of his being that Rock, and that after he suffered for us on the Cross he would send the living water of the Holy Spirit to flow out of us. John 7:37 On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, he who believes in Me.” As the Scripture has said, “Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water.” (The Temple Ezek 47, and the Rock Exodus 17, Zech 14). He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive (embrace)

The story behind the story. You can read it all in John ch 7. It starts off with Jesus staying in Galilee with his family and they were all preparing to go to the Feast of Tabernacles, and Jesus' brothers urged him to go to the temple for the feast. "Go where more people can see your miracles!" they were mocking him. "You can't be famous when you hide like this! If you're so great, prove it to the world!" - even his brothers didn't believe in him. Jesus just said "It is not the right time for me to go now. But you can go anytime and it will make no difference, for the world can't hate you; but it does hate me, because I accuse it of sin and evil. You go on, and I'll come later when it is the right time." So he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had left for the feast, then he went too, secretly, staying out of the public eye, and avoiding the crowds. He ended up taking the back roads to Jerusalem, and on his way to the temple he would have passed many hundreds of tents camped upon the hillsides because thousands of people gathered on these hills for the week of the feast.

The feast had a closing ceremony on the 7th day and the main feature was the drawing of the living water commemorating the living water that God had provided for them at the Rock in their wilderness travels.

He arrived in Jerusalem on the fourth day of the feast and went to the temple and began teaching and discussing Scripture and answering questions from the people, who were amazed and raved about his teaching (verses 14-30). They asked one another how he could have unfolded the Scriptures to them the way he did when he had not been formally taught.

People danced and sang as the water drawing ceremonies and rituals were acted out each morning. Women would get water from the surrounding springs and wells in their water pitchers and take them up to the temple singing with the men and the children from Isa 12:13 ‘Therefore with joy you SHALL DRAW WATER FROM THE WELLS OF SALVATION. On the seventh day of the feast, the GREAT DAY of the feast, as the huge golden water bowl was carried by the people up the temple steps, the huge crowd stood around watching and cheering, amidst the trumpet blasts sounding out. This was the consecration ceremony of the sacred water, the high point of the feast.

At the top of the temple steps was a special altar with a priest selected by the Sadducees, waiting for the big moment to arrive. When the bowl was presented to him he would raise his hand to indicate that the call was about to be made for people to ‘Come, you who thirst, drink of the water’. This would have been the moment, when the priest raised his hand, that Jesus would have stood in front of the crowd and called out in a strong loud voice; If anyone thirsts and believes in me let him come and drink. Those words that Jesus said this at that particular time in front of all the Jewish pilgrims from all over the Middle East, Asia Minor and Greece would have hit their ears like a thunderclap. Everybody would have known whose cry it was, and many would have seen its significance, namely that Jesus had come to embody all that past experience in the wilderness. The Scriptures tell us (verses 40-44) that division and argument broke out amongst the crowd. Many in the crowd said ‘This is The Prophet’ while others said ‘This is The Christ’, while others said ‘Would The Christ ever come out of Galilee?’

The temple police officers said ‘no one has ever spoken like this man. Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their (and our) salvation, our present faith, and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy. The Pharisees and Sadducees were furious – calling on the temple police to stop him and arrest him but they couldn’t take hold of him. Nicodemus defended Jesus saying the Law couldn’t judge unless people have heard what the man has to say (vs.50). The officers came back and said ‘we couldn’t arrest him, and ‘besides, no man has ever spoken like this before.’

The problem for Israel in the wilderness was their thinking God was not with them, but God kept showing up for them time after time. It can be the same with us. That is why Jesus was so emphatic that he was the one always with us, like the Rock that was always with them, following them in the wilderness.

The second Temple visit was an open visit when he attended the Feast of Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the feast of the re-dedication of the Temple at Jerusalem. This feast is not mentioned in the Old Testament as it occurred between the time of the last book (Malachi), and before the time of Jesus. However it is mentioned in the New Testament. It came in November/December just after the Feast of Tabernacles, and before the Feast of Passover in March/April of the next year. John 10:22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the Temple, in Solomon's porch. Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

The Feast of Hanukkah, or Feast of Dedication was instituted in 165 BC when Israel defeated the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes who had violated and blasphemously desecrated the Temple ten years earlier. The yrevived it and restored it – they resurrected it. The enemy violated and blasphemously struck down Jesus as the living Temple but Father resurrected him. The enemy has attacked and violated the living temple of God’s people over the years and left it spoiled and weakened but God has visited his people and revived and restored them. Today’s church is in great need of the revival and restoration through a work of The Holy Spirit in these days so that we can celebrate the grace and power of an outpouring of his Holy Spirit.

The feats of Passover Jesus entered Jerusalem early in the week and rode through the main street of Jerusalem in an extravagant procession. He was riding in royal style seated on a donkey and its colt while cheering crowds of people laid palm leaves on the ground before him and hailed him as their king. This posed an enormous threat not only to Herod who was the legal king over the Jews but it signalled a threat to the Empire. The people were urging him to establish his kingdom. The Jewish leaders also feared that Jesus would decides to rule over Jerusalem and keep on working miracles like feeding hungry multitudes and raising people from the dead. They feared He would be invincible and topple their own religious power base. Jesus had made clear to his disciples that the procession was to be a fulfillment of a prophecy that came from Zechariah 9:9 cry aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king is coming to you; he is righteous and able to deliver, he is humble and riding on a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey. Jesus had also told everyone that he was not interested in an earthly kingdom, but that his kingdom is a spiritual one, but even many of his followers did not want to believe this. Jesus threw the tables over in the temple that the money changers use and he chased them from the outer court area when he visited the temple that day. It was into this area where Jews from other regions came, who didn’t have the temple currency and they had to exchange their money. It was not just the money changing tables that were the problem for Jesus, because these people needed to buy turtle doves, lambs, and such things to offer sacrifices, but it was the greed and corruption. The money changers charged from twenty to three hundred percent interest. It was actually criminal.

But Jesus said that the temple was his Father’s house, and that instead of being used for prayer and wordship it was being merchandised and corrupted. His actions were not so much aggressive as they were protective. God’s wrath is most notably displayed in the earth as an act of fierce protection over what he holds as precious.

After the procession and the incident with the money changers in the temple Jesus stayed in the city and in the areas round about, teaching the crowds that followed him. This was the busiest time of the year in Jerusalem when crowds of Jews from all over the Empire were gathering for the Passover feast. Jesus came under fiercer and more intense scrutiny from the temple leaders than ever before. Questions were hurled at him to entice him into confrontation regarding moral and legal issues of their temple religion. But Jesus was not about to be baited like an animal of prey. He fielded their questions with a calm authority and it was the tormentors who became enraged by the superior wisdom and integrity of their prey to be. Crowds of Jews looked on in expectation. Many wanted a show of strength and might to come from Jesus after these thrusts and parries, for surely this was the time for him to start his kingdom. But they were to be disappointed. Jesus was on a path that would lead to a far greater demonstration of such might that the whole cosmos would be shaken by it, and he knew that even though the time was short, it was still not yet. His trial was yet to come, The cross was yet to come, and then the resurrection. And it was his prophetic statement about the Temple being destroyed and raised up again in three days that was used as blasphemy against him to condemn him at his trial.